


Psychopomp

by RookSacrifice



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Ancient Egyptian Afterlife, Blueshipping, Dragon sex, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Interspecies Sex, Manakete!Kisara, Romance, Rough Sex, Sexual Content, Whump, YGOME20, coldbloodedshipping, forcing kaiba to confront his mortality again, post-cannon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:14:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 30,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27591203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RookSacrifice/pseuds/RookSacrifice
Summary: At the end of a life well lived, Seto Kaiba awakens alone in the desert of the Duat where he encounters an ethereal maiden with eyes of blue. On his journey to enter Aaru and find peace in the afterlife, Kaiba will be forced to confront his inner turmoil with the help of a woman who is more than meets the eye…YGO MINI EXCHANGE 2020
Relationships: Blue-Eyes White Dragon/Kaiba Seto, Kaiba Seto/Kisara
Comments: 20
Kudos: 15
Collections: Yu-Gi-Oh! It's Time to G-G-G-Gift! [Mini-Exchange]





	1. Khet | Body

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hergan416](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hergan416/gifts).



> I know this is a bit off base from the scenarios laid out in your original prompt, but I really wanted to take to heart the spirit of your request for love/respect between the dragon and Kaiba and treating it as a serious relationship. This is outside my usual genre and I've never written anything like this before, but it was a ton of fun to step outside my comfort zone on this one. Hope you enjoy the final result! 
> 
> \--xoxo rooksacrifice ♡
> 
> PS - Just for fun, here's [the playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0Dmkjoky9HmmSJ0kAUAo43) I wrote this fic to, I think it makes a fitting reader soundtrack as well :)

Under the silver eyes of a thousand-thousand souls watching from the heavens, Atem rode alone over the shifting sands. The grains, innumerable as the pricks of light above, rose in the wind to dance around hooves, man and beast a single shadow in the night. The dominion of men, with the steeples of the palace and the temple of Amun-Re dwarfed into a silhouette in the distant horizon behind them, the wild expanse of Aaru stretched out ahead in all directions. He watched the stars, riding southward, deeper into the land of spirits and the heart of the Nile. 

This day had long been upon them. Time here did not pass the same as it did in the mortal world, but it passed all the same. With it, certain fates that are known to all men come to be. Even for those men known for defying destiny. 

His horse, Sa-ash, huffed with the familiar goose-like whine that earned her name, already nearing exhaustion under their breakneck pace but the journey was far from over and had to be finished tonight. In a few more hours, the sun would rise on the Field of Reeds, and so too would it rise on the Duat, the land between one life and the next. 

"Come now," He shushed with soothing strokes. "We must ride faster than the horses of the dawn."

Atem looked to the heavens again, gaze locked on a single brilliant flickering hole in the black, leaking light defiantly on the desert. His advisors had been watching the sky for seven nights, and tonight the news had come just after sunset. An Imperishable Star, one that had not been there the night before, glittering in the sky of the morning. The mark of a pharaoh's passing.

There was only one left who that could be...

Jagged stone cliff faces rose up out of the plains in the distance, sharp peaks reaching high above the banks of the Nile, her twists and turns disappearing into the craggs rising higher in altitude. He needed to reach the source. 

The fork where the two tributaries, the Blue Nile and the White Nile, mingle to form the life-giving waters of the valley. That's where he'd seek this desperate favor.

Sa-ash labored over the rocky landscape in the thin moonlight, and Atem was forced to continue on foot, carrying what he could of the supplies he had brought wrapped in a canvas bag. More than once he lost his footing on the narrow mountain pass, nearly falling to another death on the fanged rocks and frothing white rapids of the blue waters below. By the time he'd reached the peak, the color of the sky was shifting dangerously close to morning twilight, leaving him with precious little time to make his beseeching appeal. 

Atem paused to admire the awesome beauty of the view from the precarious heights, high altitude stealing his breath and cool of the dry, desert air whipping his hair into tangles in front of his eyes. From here the realm of men and spirits seemed so small and distant. Trivial and insignificant before the ancient might of the sky. Perhaps that's what it felt like to fly. 

His reverie was shattered in an instant by the warm humidity of breath on the nape of his neck. He froze, paralyzed with the fear that accompanied the knowledge of insignificance. That of an ant before a lion. 

"Why are you here, little pharaoh?" The voice dripped from a maw of fangs, escaping with a guttural growl but fell on his ears with the melodic softness of a woman.

"You have seen it written in the stars. You know what has come to pass." Atem bid his confidence not to waiver, but his fortitude was fading fast.

"I do not need the stars to reveal the matters of my own heart." The opalescent gleam of pure white scales in the moonlight flashed in his periphery before her tail cracked upon the earth, shaking rocks free from the heights and sending them reeling over the cliff face.

"He will not be buried in the custom." He fought the urge to shake at the thought that his own body could easily join the rocks, a pebble to her. One that could be sent over the edge should it strike her fancy.

"I am not concerned with the customs of men." Atem could sense a mounting impatience, the hot breath rising with her wild temper. "Why are you here?"

Atem turned around, catching a passing glance of piercing blue eyes radiant in the starlight before turning his eyes to the ground and dropping to his knees in respect.

"I beseech your generosity for a humble request."

"I do not serve the whims of men and I do not serve pharaohs!" Wrong answer. The screech of fury struck his ears with the force of lightning and he fought the urge to cover his ears with his hands.

"It is not a request for me," Atem scrambled quickly to appease her hot temper, growl still rolling like thunder deep in her chest. "In a few hours the sun will rise and my High Priest will wake in the Duat, buried with nothing but the clothes on his back. Without food and water he will die there. He does not have the texts to show him the way to the weighing of the heart."

"I am only a man, I cannot cross over to aid him." Atem pressed his face into the earth with a deep bow. "Please... Guide him home."

"I will grant this request, but I do not grant it for you." The woman's voice was stern and rung across the cliff faces with finality. Atem did not pick his face up to watch her, he could only hear as the great beast rose to her haunches and the gale from the beat of her majestic wings ruffled his tunic.

"I am in your debt." He whispered.

But the crest of the mountain was already empty and as the warmth of dawn crept over the horizon he found himself alone once again.

* * *

Kaiba woke to the blistering heat of the sun on his pale cheeks, already flushed and beginning to burn. Before he opened his eyes his fingers gripped at the ground beneath him, finding no purchase in the shifting, sandy dirt. He dared to blink his eyes open, only to shut them again from the intensity of the light. He lingered.

The heat that burned his flesh warmed and soothed his tired and aching joints under his clothes. His knees throbbed, soles of his feet sore, muscles in odd places he didn't have names for felt tender just under the surface of his skin. He let out a long breath and the dry air stung deep in his lungs on the inhale. He dared his eyes to open again, slowly fluttering against the dazzling brilliant sunlight until he could take in his surroundings. 

The sun was high in the sky and the landscape was desaturated in the afternoon light. The sky, devoid of any clouds, was the only deeply colored element in the painting, a lurid blue against the umbered dust of the earth. With his cheek on the ground, warping his perspective, the horizon cut a vertical line through his field of view. Sharp orange rocks cut out perpendicular, jutting up into a distant jagged skyline.

He drew his shaking hands, wrinkled but still manicured, under the willowy frame of his chest and summoned what little strength he could muster to turn himself onto his side.

What was this place? There were no landmarks in the immediate surroundings, only a seemingly endless expanse of desert stretching out in all directions. No rolling hills, no rock formations, no plants...

No water.

After another parched and burning breath seared his lungs, Kaiba coughed out the dust and sand he'd inhaled while lying down. He struggled again, this time taking several tries to push his weary frame to a sitting position. He surveyed his body for injuries, surprised to find none but more shocked to find himself dressed in his dueling clothes that he hadn't worn in years. His frail frame swam in the white leather trench coat and the black rayon turtleneck underneath was no longer fitted to svelte muscle but loose over wasting limbs. Even his boots felt loose on his feet somehow. He had a holster with his deck, too. A duel disk, an exceptionally old model--the one he used in the Battle City tournament all those years ago--was lashed to his right arm. Despite its immense sentimental value he regretted that however he'd gotten here he hadn't brought the lighter, modern model they implemented at the academy. It was easier to hold steady now that he'd gotten older...

And how had he gotten here?

Just as Kaiba had not the faintest guess as to where he was, he was equally at a loss as to the how.

He couldn't remember when he'd gotten here. The last thing he remembered he was--

He couldn't remember the last thing he was doing. Sure, he could remember things, but they all seemed distant and hazy, long ago and non sequitur, in the way memories of youth came in episodic packages, singular events tied to strong emotions. Kaiba couldn't recall the details, mundane or otherwise, that brought him to the vast wasteland he sat in now.

His younger self might have been incensed at the predicament, but now he was far too exhausted to expend energy on such trivialities. All of life is a game, and the only worthwhile use of our limited energy is spent playing it. Now more than ever, he felt empty and spent, baked clean out of constitution in the oppressive heat. The questions of higher purpose could be made to wait. His parched throat demanded more immediate attention.

He needed to find water.

With an excruciating heave, Kaiba drew himself up, first to shaking knees, then to wobbling feet. He struggled to balance his lanky figure on gnarled legs and the hunched posture adopted from thousands of long nights and longer days at the computer did not help his predicament. His feet ached before taking even a single step, suggesting perhaps he'd come on foot and simply forgotten. There were no footsteps to follow back the way he came. 

He set his eyes on a distant jagged peak, one he estimated to be north from the ambiguous position of the sun, and resolved to march endlessly in one direction until he hopefully encountered some semblance of civilization.

His march was in vain. It was impossible to judge the passage of time here. He felt as exhausted as if he'd been walking for hours but the sun appeared not to have moved at all and the distant rocks never seemed to get any closer. Again and again he was tempted to stray, to chase the heat mirages of rippling water on the flat, sandy expanse but he knew the tantalizing illusions would betray him. With every step, his exhaustion threatened to wrest control and drive him back to his knees on the dusted Earth.

Stay the course.

Perhaps, had he been younger, he'd have found the indefatigable discipline to do so but he wasn't anymore. Life, it seemed, had a way of draining the soul of energy until at last every ounce expired in empty weariness. He allowed himself the weakness of reprieve.

The desert takes and it takes, and Kaiba assumed it knew how to do nothing else, but in this moment it offered the slightest gift of a breeze. Hot and dry and stale as three day old bread but superior to the languid stillness that otherwise cloyed at the skin.

With a subtleness, a certain quality of air, the wind took on the taste of breath and formed around syllables harsh and grating, familiar yet foreign and long forgotten.

"Have I learned..."

Kaiba wrenched his head in all directions to find the source, only to be reminded of his inescapable isolation. When the illusion was nearly forgotten, the wind rose again, stronger and more sure of it's mocking.

"Have I learned what you wanted..."

He sprang to his feet, heart palpitating arrhythmic and beating with the cry for escape in his chest.

"...father?"

"Who are you?" Kaiba cried out into the vast wasteland, spinning on a crooked axis and searching for an answer. Only to find himself blind.

"Show yourself, you coward!"

There was no one around to answer but himself.

The hours ticked by like minutes or the minutes ticked by like hours, it was difficult to judge the difference. When at last he felt he'd been lost for days and feeling desperate for food and drink, Kaiba collapsed under the heavy burden of sun and exhaustion. His body felt so dry and spent, the flesh so wrinkled and wrung out of life that he felt as though lying here it would not be so terrible a thought for his bones to crumble back into the dust of the Earth where they came from.

That is when the fevered hallucinations, those hungry jackals of memory arrived to dine upon what remained of his humanity.

The anguished feeling of helplessness, first learned and then unlearned, and then learned again collared his throat and despite his knowledge that he was alone the illusion of strikes against his skin falling heavy and bruising deep stung his legs and arms and ribs.

There was no Mokuba here.  
There were no duels to win here.  
There was nothing. No reason to fight.

As though a plug were pulled out on his will to stand, to argue, to battle one last time...

There was no reason, now to try again.  
Maybe, finally, it would be okay to rest.

And never wake up.

* * *

“Seto…”

The familiar, soothing voice fell on Kaiba’s ears like the patter of rain. Just another desert mirage teasing him back into awareness when he so desperately wanted to sleep. He twitched his face as though to chase away a fly perched on his nose.

“Seto, can you hear me?”

The woman's voice was dulcet and deep. Where had he heard her speak before? It didn’t feel important. Nothing was important, save for falling back to sleep…

Kaiba distantly sensed a nimble arm snake under his neck. Sensed but didn’t quite feel himself being lifted to sitting, as though he were watching himself move from third person.

“Seto,” She repeated, a note of anxiety crawling into the name. “Seto, please you can’t fall asleep.”

She gave a stiff shake to his shoulders, but he had to make an extraordinary effort just to feel it now. His mind was adrift, wandering in the desert. The tether binding him to his figure was frayed and close to snapping. He wanted to open his eyes but couldn’t. The lids were impossibly heavy, the weight of his own body impossibly limp. Why couldn’t she let him sleep a little longer?

“If you fall asleep now, you won’t wake up.” That didn’t sound so terrible, truly. 

“ _Open for me the doors to the celestial waters of Toth-Hapi, Lord of the Horizon, Cleaver of Earth. I am the master of water as Set is master of his weapon. I have eaten the thigh; I have seized the bone and flesh. Behold, I am the heir to eternity, to whom hath been given everlastingness.”_

Her words were like water and _familiar… so familiar…_

“Here, drink this.” Her fingers were ice cold despite the blistering heat and brought cooling relief when she ran them over his lips and tongue, prying open his throat. The taste of something-not water, but like figs and yeast with a bitter aftertaste-coated his palette and stung on the way to his stomach. He coughed on reflex, and she patted his chest encouragingly.

“Again.”

Kaiba obeyed, wandering closer in his own senses. A weak, tingling numbness awoke in the tips of his fingers and toes. He hadn’t noticed when he’d lost track of his extremities and was suddenly hyper aware that he was being held by a stranger but was still too exhausted to pull away. With the most extraordinary effort, he willed his eyes to flutter open against the oppressive sunlight and the whole world spun dizzyingly in his field of view.

Center frame, shading his face from the harsh light of the perpetual noon sun, was an ethereal silver haired maiden with eyes of piercing blue. Her figure swam in his double-vision in and out of focus, coming together and drifting apart, sometimes with one face, sometimes with three. She gave a reassuring smile and soft chuckle.

“There are better places to take a nap than on the ground, you know.”

He’d encountered worse hallucinations in this place to be sure. He let out a sigh of relief and relaxed without thinking into the reassurance of her touch. He closed his eyes again, dizzy to the point of nausea, and didn’t try to fight it when her cool touch pushed the sweat-matted hair off his mottled forehead. A soothing hum bubbled up from deep in her chest and Kaiba allowed himself to feel a little less lost in her presence.

_Have we met before?_

He was certain they had. He was too exhausted or he might have been frustrated with himself for not remembering. He wanted to ask, but his body was too weak to produce the words.

“We can’t stay here, it’s too dangerous,” She said. “We need to start moving before nightfall. Can you stand?”

Kaiba lacked even the strength to shake his head no. The drink had helped, but he was still excruciatingly tired. All he could think about was sleep. The woman must have caught on to his failing awareness because she took his hand.

“Stay with me, Seto…” She squeezed. “Please.”

“Hnnn…” Kaiba groaned, and she seemed relieved just to hear him make a sound. He didn’t want to let her down. If this beautiful young woman wanted anything to do with an old man like him, he wouldn’t let her down. He wouldn’t let her down…

Her one arm still supported his flopping neck while the other wound under his knees and with a great heave that seemed far too effortless for her slight frame, she lifted him into her arms.

“Try to focus on the sound of my voice.”

Her melodic humming returned, reverberating through his bones with the sound of rolling thunder and summer rain. His body bobbed in her steady grasp and Kaiba let himself find peace in being carried over the sands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _subtle nod to all the fire emblem fans in the audience_


	2. Sah | Spirit

When Kaiba opened his eyes again, he wasn’t moving. He wasn’t being carried, or even held. He was lying down on his dueling jacket that had been disgracefully slipped off his arms to use as a blanket. Nightfall was fast approaching, and the golden light of evening heightened the redness of the earth the way he imagined Mars might have looked at sunset if he’d ever had the chance to go. Heat was starting to dissipate off the sandy landscape and the air cooled off before ushering in the desert night.

The crackling beginnings of a fire warmed to life beside his head just beyond view and Kaiba caught a silver flash of fluid platinum white before the whips of hair wandered off.

“Oh great, I’m hallucinating again…”

He was still unable to sit up, but he was glad to have found his voice again, even if it was hardly more than a hoarse, raspy wheezing. He heaved to catch his breath. Kaiba’s chest felt tight. All day he’d begun to feel starved for air and the feeling was nearing unbearable. He heard the woman prodding the fire, but she didn’t acknowledge him.

“Will you,” He paused to suck in a shallow breath. “Tell me your name?”

“I believe you owe me something first,” her voice sounded tested, and he heard the snap of a stick over her leg.

“What do you want from me?” Kaiba recoiled, berating his instincts that screamed to trust her so completely. Clearly that had been a mistake.

“Nothing so dreadful as you imagine,” Now she sounded almost… teasing? Kaiba was growing impatient.

“Spit it out!” He hissed, but it did not sound nearly as threatening as he’d hoped because of his growing shortness of breath.

“A thank you, Seto,” Her face popped into view with a soft smile and he couldn’t help but soften too, immediately adrift on the sea of her brilliant blue eyes.

“Thank you…?” He prompted.

“Kisara.”

“Kisara…” His lips curled around the name like coming home. “Where are we, Kisara?”

There was a long pause without an answer other than the evening wind over the sand.

“I’m not sure I should tell you, if you don’t already know…” She whispered.

“Try me,” His breathing was uselessly thin now, his chest not expanding at all on the inhale.

“Seto…” She started and stopped, mouth opening and closing with indecision. “Seto, you’re dead.”

“Sure. Cute—” He tried to cough but nothing came in or out and he desperately gulped for air.

“Can you breathe?” She snapped into action, feeling around his ribs for expansion and finding none. Kaiba was too terrified to answer, suddenly faced with the threat of suffocation.

“ _I am the jackal of jackals: I am Shu. I draw air from the presence of the light-god, from the uttermost limits of the heavens—”_

“Shut up and help me!” Kaiba hissed out, unable to reclaim the breath after he’d spent it on the words. She was spouting more Egyptian nonsense the likes of which he hadn’t heard since he was dueling the pharaoh eons ago.

“— _from the uttermost limits of the earth, from the uttermost limits of the pinion of nether-birds. May air be given unto this young divine babe.”_

“Kisara—"

“Repeat after me,” She tilted his chin back to open his airway. “ _My mouth is open; I see with my eyes.”_

“What?!” Kaiba wheezed, gripped with fear and unable to even flounder and claw at his burning throat. “I-I can’t, I’m—”

“Say it.” She commanded. He obeyed.

“My mouth is open; I see with my eyes.”

In an instant, the grip collapsing his lungs released and air rushed into his chest with the force of typhoon winds. Kaiba gasped and choked, a glutton for lost oxygen. She laid a soothing hand over his.

“You should rest, but don’t fall asleep…” Her brow furrowed into knotted concern. “The burning will start soon enough.”

* * *

“AH!” Kaiba hissed, thrashing and clawing at his own skin. His body blistered with fever and every inch of his flesh boiled as though it were cooked on an open fire and peeling back from the bones themselves. He dug his own nails into his arms, longing to pry it off. _Anything. He would do anything to stop the burning._

Absently, he recognized his hands were wet with his own blood, fingers growing too slick to keep clawing and still the fire raged deep in his veins. It blazed and coiled deep in the marrow, burning from the inside out.

“Stop that, stop it!” Kisara pried his hands away to keep him from touching himself. “You must let yourself take on a new body or you will be lost to the east and wander this place forever.”

“Don’t touch me!” He wailed, wrenching and twisting to break free of her grasp but she was stronger than she looked. “I don’t want to be here! Get me out! Let me go! Don’t look at me!”

His spasms were growing uncontrollable, threatening to crack his own ribs and tear his muscles if he couldn’t restrain himself.

“Seto, you have to stay calm,” She climbed on top of him, pinning him down with her own weight. “This will pass, but you must not let the body perish before it is reborn.”

“Don’t tell me what to do!” Kaiba’s arms kept breaking free, trying to shove her off. “I won’t do what you tell me! No one tells me what to do!”

“ _Let all The Spirits prostrate themselves when they recognize me, and behold, the fear of me shall terrify them; and thus also let it be with every being that has died, whether it be animal, or bird, or fish, or worm, or reptile.”_ Kisara began reciting another spell. She dragged them up to sitting and kept her arms wrapped around his convulsing form with his back pressed up against her chest. His legs kicked up the sand in a wild fervor but there was only so much she could do without tying him down. “ _Let life rise out of death. Let not the decay caused by any reptile make an end of me and let not my enemies come against me in their various forms.”_

“I don’t want to hear any more of your Egyptian bull!” Kaiba howled. “I told you, I’m not dead! Let me go!!”

“ _Do not give me over to The Slaughterer in this execution-chamber, who kills the faithful and makes them rot, being himself invisible, and who destroys the bodies of the dead and lives by carnage. Let me live and perform his order; I will do what is commanded by him.”_

“I HATE YOU!! WHERE’S MOKUBA?! WHAT DID YOU DO WITH HIM? I’LL KILL YOU!!” His nails tore at her flesh too, splitting skin open and trailing smears of both their blood in deep red prints over her dress, his coat, their faces.

“ _Give me not over to his fingers, let him not overcome me, for I am under your command, O Lord of the Gods.”_

Finally, with the last of her words, the burning began to subside. Not all at once but slowly, ebbing out of his body and stealing his energy again with it. He groaned and spat at her still, saliva pink from biting his own tongue and sticky and dry from his still-parched palette. Kisara still held him close, running her hands soothingly down his chest even as he flinched at her touch.

“Mokuba’s safe.” She whispered.

“Take me to him,” Kaiba fought to stand but he was suddenly weak again and he collapsed in her arms. “Please, take me to him. I’ll do anything.”

“I can’t…” Her voice was soft and rueful, and she buried her lips in his sweat-mottled hair. His breathing relaxed and Kaiba again drifted in and out of awareness, muttering soft pleas against her ruined clothes. Thin silvery tears rolled down her cheeks. “I can’t. I can’t.”

* * *

Kaiba rolled over onto his back only to find his cheek dotted with hot grains from where his face had been resting in the sand. His heart felt heavy in his chest and when he opened his eyes the world spun dizzy circles on its axis. Vultures circled high above him in the pinkening skies, no doubt among the first of the brute beasts and wandering birds that were making to press their muzzles to his weak and bloody figure in the night. At last, he was piecing together a few stray threads of his sense of self and one all important question flooded back to the forefront of his psyche in a raging torrent.

_Where’s Mokuba?_

Distantly he heard the woman Kisara stoking the fire and the radiating warmth felt different than the heat of the sands. More human, more familiar. Safe. It tethered him back to reality. Or at least here, if this were reality at all…

“Take me to him…” He croaked out only to be met with her exasperated sign.

“We’ve been over this,” She said, cracking in half another stick and tossing it on the pyre. “You cannot turn back. That door is shut. The only path left is forward.”

“I don’t believe you,” He said, propping himself up of one arm, noting the way his torn flesh had been delicately cleaned while he was unaware. “If I were truly dead, then I wouldn’t be conscious. If I’m still here… If I’m still here, there’s a way back to Mokuba.”

“Then what do you make of your visit with the pharaoh?” Kisara spoke with a sort of leveled certainty while she stoked the fire. Her long legs, tangled in the bloodstained gossamer of her dress, stretched out in the sands beside his own.

“What would you know about that?” He spat back. Kaiba was loathed to admit it, but it frightened him that she knew. The only one he’d discussed his journey with was Mokuba.

“I was there…” She gave him a wounded, searching expression. Her voice was soft.

“Don’t act like I’m so stupid. You weren’t there. First, you couldn’t have been and even if you had…” He made a show of running his eyes up her ethereal figure. “I think I’d remember you.”

Kisara’s eyes grew shrewd and narrow in return and she let out an amused chuckle. She ran a hand over the broken skin of his leg where he’d ripped the fabric of his pants in his wild fever. A gentle caress, at first, but the salt of their mingled sweat stung the scratches and her sharp nails caught on the edges of torn flesh. Kaiba let out a hiss.

“This form is so tiresome around men like you.” When she spoke, her voice was laced with a subtle roughness from somewhere deep in her chest. “I much prefer the beast.”

“Hmmm…” Kaiba pressed his leg into her touch even as her hands strung the raw, tender skin. “Sounds far more interesting than the damsel.”

Kisara snatched her hand back in defiance, running the palm of it down the thigh of her dress before turning her attention back towards tending the fire. He gave a snort and flopped back on the sands, stirring up a puff of orange granules.

“It’s you who’s the damsel, Seto. Or you will be when I leave you here at night fall,” Her humor was easier and she stared out at the distant horizon where the sun was at last inching closer towards slumber. Time passed strangely here, and Kaiba could only pray the night would run faster than the day had.

“Fine. Leave me.” His tone suggested he was joking too in his own dry, bitter way. A sign that he was healing. “It will give me a chance to search for my brother, with or without your help…”

“His own time will come,” She soothed. “For now, I hope you don’t mean to rush it through your own selfishness.”

* * *

When the light of the sun finally sank behind the distant hills, Kaiba was enraptured with wonder at the desert twilight. The heat burned itself off and a chill settled itself over the landscape. He suddenly understood the purpose of the fire. The warm glow of evening had hardly dissipated from the sky and Kaiba found himself drawing up to sitting with his dueling coat thrown over his shoulders once again.

The looming night held an aura of the unknown and Kaiba found himself subconsciously drawn closer to Kisara’s side. This wasn’t a place fit for loneliness, even for him. She didn’t seem averse to the company.

He was more himself on the inside again but hardly on the outside. Kaiba reached his hands out to warm his pale, thin fingers over the flame. The wrinkles had faded, and his joints were no longer swollen with arthritis. His shoulders once again filled out the sleeves of his jacket and he could feel the taught lines of his own muscular frame shifting under his shirt. Kaiba even ran his fingers over his face, surprised to find the hills and valleys of frown lines leveled out to tautness and his thin hair once again thick and full. He even felt a growing spryness under his skin, still tired but less existentially so now. The brand of tired that came with exertion rather than age.

He was younger.

“How did you do this?” He whispered in wonder. Kaiba wasn’t one to believe in so-called magic, but he was hardly one to deny his own eyes either. She must have done something to him when he was sick. Perhaps she was the one who _made_ him sick in order to accomplish such a medically fascinating metamorphosis.

“I had nothing to do with this,” She said. “It is simply the outward manifestation of your inner self. This will be your new body in this place. It lacks some of the more onerous limitations of your old one.”

Kaiba wriggled his fingers and toes, impressed with the realism of it all. The movements were smooth, and there seemed no limit to the playfield they were in. The world itself felt inexplicably real, every minute sensation rendered in exquisite detail. Perhaps better than any Solid Vision he had programmed…

“This is an impressive virtual reality, you could almost confuse it for the real thing,” Kaiba stopped, unwilling to concede a technological victory to anyone, especially a stranger. “ _Almost.”_

“Reality has a way of feeling most believable,” Kisara quipped, features looking sharpened under the light of the flames.

_"Richer than the forms you’ve summoned me in lately…"_

Kaiba could have sworn he heard her mumble under her breath, face twisted in taught exasperation.

“What?” He said.

“Nothing…” Kisara sighed, reaching her hands out towards the warmth of the fire. He mirrored the gesture, bringing their fingers only inches apart. Carefully he closed the distance, soft pads of his fingers running lightly over the smooth, pale skin. The contact felt both familiar and electric, waking up some distant memory he couldn’t quite materialize, the way smells sometimes drag things long and forgotten back to the surface.

“What are you thinking about?” She asked softly, sitting perfectly still under his inspection. Perhaps she felt it too.

“Nothing.” He jerked his hands away and laid back down in the sands, still yearning to finally be allowed sleep. He watched the firelight lick patterns over her high cheekbones and determined expression while the last of daylight sunk down beyond the far horizon and welcomed the cool caress of the desert night.

* * *

At last, true blackness dripped over the desert like thick pitch and the heaviness masked the shades haunting the impenetrable dark beyond their shared fire. The eerie silence held no sounds of nocturnal birds or insects, only the soft crackling of thin kindling. Kaiba had drifted closer to Kisara in the passive silence stretching out between them, sucked in by her strange gravity until one knee of one stretched out leg lightly pressed the small of her back as he lay on his side. He let out a listless sigh, this time a peaceful one instead of in anguish. At last his body and spirit felt reunited instead of separate, and only held together by a thin thread.

He made to sit up but was held in place by Kisara’s hand on his chest. He huffed in resistance.

“Feeling better?” She asked.

“I’m fine,” He meant for it to sound snappier than it did but couldn’t bring himself to be so bitter with her, despite everything. Somehow, he suspected she told the truth. None of this was her fault.

The air was deathly still, and the thought of it sent a chill down Kaiba’s spine. She had said… Now that he’d regained a sense of self, his memories crept back in on him, foggy and hardly discernible.

His bed in the mansion. Mokuba, beside it, at least until he left for breakfast. An older version than the one he always remembered. Somehow, Mokuba never aged beyond sixteen in his mind. Not when he became vice president of Kaiba Corp, not when he had his own sons, not when his skin leathered and wrinkled alongside his own. A vase of sunflowers, a gift for Yugi that he pretended to hate. A coughing fit, a familiar chest pain. The warm light of the morning, and nothing else after he shut his eyes in the sunlight.

So, this was it then? As she said it was? Kaiba reached out a hand and wrapped his fingers through the crook of her arm, just to feel something real, but didn’t let go after feeling her solid form. His thumb rubbed over the bone of her elbow, lost in thought. She allowed it without squirming away.

“I don’t want to find Mokuba…” He whispered, more to himself than to her. “Not here…”

Kisara gave only the slightest nod to show she’d heard. Her endless blue eyes drank from his own and one cool, thin hand of hers cupped his cheek, brushing away the grains of sand pressed in the skin.

“Did this…” He swallowed, trying to form the words but asking made everything still too real for comfort. “Did you go through this? Were you… Like me?”

“Yes and no,” She said. Kaiba wanted to grow irritated with her evasive response but was placated by the gentle comb of her fingers through the hair behind his ear. She had a gift for that. “I—” Kaiba could read where she delicately side stepped the word _died._ “I’ve been here a long time. It wasn’t like with you… This isn’t my true form.”

Kisara suddenly looked distant, moored on some unreachable pier. She drew her gaze and hand away, but Kaiba caught it before it strayed too far.

“Is this a trick?” He narrowed his eyes and squeezed hard on her fingers. Ever mistrustful.

“No.” She answered with quick reassurance. “But this isn’t me, either. At least, it’s not who I want to be.”

“Then why bother?” Kaiba scoffed and let her hand go before flopping back down. “Don’t tell me it’s for other people.”

“Some things, I think, are easier this way,” She huffed and Kaiba watched her busy herself with picking at her own skin around her nails, prying the flesh away from their unnerving sharpness. “Get some sleep, it’s safe now. We’ll set out in the morning.”

Kaiba didn’t need to be told twice. He rolled over on his stomach, shielding his eyes from the light of the fire, and drifted immediately off into dreamlessness.


	3. Ib | Heart

Kaiba woke up with the rising of the sun, bright and brilliant, making it’s was up over the distant horizon in the east. The morning was cool but warming fast. Kisara was already awake and had put out the fire with sand, carefully diffusing any evidence that they had been there and mixing the ash into the orange earth so thoroughly no hint of the grey remained. Kaiba wondered who she worried might be following them…

“It’s time to get going,” She said, drawing up to her feet and brushing the dirt and sand from her hands and tattered dress. Kaiba did the same, pleased to find his body strong instead of withered, no creaking bones and aching muscles. His newfound youthful energy was invigorating. It reminded him faintly of his visit to Aaru. Distantly, he recognized a similarity in the atmosphere but something felt… off. Grating. This place lacked the peaceful aura of where he’d met the pharaoh long ago.

“Where are we headed?” He spun around slowly in all directions, shielding his eyes from the oppressive sunlight that was growing stronger every minute. Still there were no landmarks in sight but at least with the rising sun they could pick out east from west for what little help that supplied. “There’s nothing for miles.” 

“Home,” Kisara flashed a meaningful smile in his direction, brimming with hope. Kaiba rolled his eyes.

“Oh, so all that crap about the inescapable and death and the path forward was a lie? You couldn’t take me home to see a doctor when I was dying but _now_ I can go home?” He snapped. “Go back to whatever rock you crawled out from under in this wasteland, I’ll make it out alone.”

Kaiba started to trudge off, sweat practically steaming off his sable hair. His feet slipped in the loose sands and his shifts and slips made his marching far less intimidating than he’d intended it to look. Kisara giggled.

“You’re going the wrong way, you know,” She waited patiently in place for him to burn off some of his ever-present wrath. “Trust me, eastward is the last place you want to find yourself lost come nightfall…”

Kaiba huffed and turned, colliding with her shoulder in a show of frustration as he turned around and started plodding west instead.

“Perhaps home was the wrong word…” She watched him make slow progress and eventually took off after him far enough to leave him space to boil but close enough to keep in earshot. “We are going where you need to be.”

“What do you know about where I need to be?” Kaiba said, fiery as ever.

“I’ve been right so far, haven’t I?”

“That’s yet to be seen.”

“My apologies, I suppose I’ll leave you to shrivel up with thirst and whatever remains of your soulless bones can be picked at by the vultures next time,” Kisara teased. “Duly noted.”

“What do you want with me?!” Kaiba yelled in exasperation, whirling around to meet her piercing blue gaze. Kisara furrowed her brow and softened into what looked too close to pity for his liking. She licked her drying lips and his eyes followed the enticing movement.

“The same thing I always have, Seto,” Her words were gentle and she skated around all the ones he didn’t want to hear from anyone and Kaiba was suddenly met with the realization that her didn’t want to leave her. Not just to avoid wandering the desert alone, but the thought of going anywhere without her stabbed in his heart. He stared at her in the silence, willing his face not to betray the thought.

“What direction?” He said finally.

“North-West,” She said and let him take the lead.

* * *

Kisara, he thinks, is not letting on to all she knows about the nature of this place and its shifting landscape. A maze without any walls or turns to mark the way. They were marching along in shared silence until the sun marked noon in the sky. Kaiba couldn’t be sure when he first noticed the smattering of tents and polls and canvas bobbing up between the dunes because at first he thought it was a mirage. Soon it was close enough to make out a very material caravan dotted with Tuareg peoples shrouded in linen around their bodies and faces to shield themselves from the blistering rays.

Kaiba’s first thought was to be jealous. He pressed his fingers to the swollen tenderness under his eyes, the pale skin raw with the beginnings of burns. His thick leather dueling coat was a poor choice for the weather, and he tried not to imagine that he wound up here wearing it because he’d been buried in it. The notion made his skin crawl. His duel disk weighed heavy on his arm, and though he couldn’t figure what he might need it for now, he couldn’t bring himself to abandon something so sentimental in some irretrievable, forgotten spot in the vast desert void.

Kisara watched him padding the sore hollows under his eyes before pressing her fingers to them herself, feeling the way the warmth radiated off his burns. Her touch was a cool relief, always with a soothing chill compared to the surrounding desert air as though her blood itself ran cold in her veins.

“Hnnn...” She hummed softly in thought before turning without a word into the small, bustling crowd milling about and ducked inside of a canvas tent.

“Hey, wait!” Kaiba sighed, Kisara had a mind all her own. A useful companion, but not an easy one. He followed after her into the caravan.

Kaiba pushed through the ranks of men and women wrapped in dyed linens, their voices speaking some incomprehensible tongue and rising in an indecipherable cacophony. He kept his hand over his eyes to shade them from the blinding light. He cursed to himself, unable to tell which tent Kisara had dipped into and the sea of billowing canvas drapery seemed to shift constantly, an ever expanding labyrinth with every twist an turn looking the same as the last. He kept his gaze pinned to the sands.

When he was finally sick of searching, Kaiba decided to ask one of the strangers if they had seen her. Language barrier or not, Kisara was hardly one to go easily unnoticed in a crowd with her looks.

When at last he looked up to face one of the myriad of nomads, he only managed a brief glimpse before a set of pale fingers clawed a hand each over his eyes and mouth, gratefully masking the scream that threatened to escape his throat.

_They had no eyes._

Kisara ushered him into an unoccupied tent before he managed to make a scene, still neglecting to release him from her fierce, protective clutches.

“I can’t leave you be for a second,” She hissed out in a hushed voice, the edge of her serpentine tongue catching on the shell of his ear when she spoke. Kaiba struggled to pry her hands free but she was far stronger than she looked and her arm dug into his throat. “You should have waited for me.”

Kaiba lodged an elbow in her ribs and she let go of his mouth but not his eyes.

“You could have said that,” He growled. “Let go of my eyes!”

“They will take them if you aren’t careful,” She tightened her grip as if to make a threat of it.

“What does that even mean, you’re about to claw them out as it is!” His voice grew louder and she shushed into his ear.

“You have nothing else to barter with,” She said.

“They have nothing I need,” He countered. “Why are we here?”

“For directions,” She said and at last carefully lifted her hand from his face. Kaiba watched her pull out a thin silky scarf tucked into her belt with a wry smile. “And for this.”

“You don’t know where you’re going?!” Kaiba’s anger was always seething beneath the surface, waiting for any reason to bubble over.

“I do,” Kaiba missed her cryptic answer, mesmerized instead with the the way she dipped two long fingers over the hollow of her tongue and removing the slick, shimmering digits before pressing them again the the swollen, purpling burns at the crest of his cheek bones. He hissed at the sting of the contact, but didn’t pull back.

“You—you don’t—” He stammered.

“Know where we’re going?” She flashed a devious smirk. “You already asked that.”

Kaiba gave a defeated snort and felt his face heat up, and not from the burns.

“Then why ask for directions?” He tried to look at anything but Kisara.

“A formality. The path won’t open if you don’t seek the help,” Kisara smoothed out the scarf, folding it on the diagonal into a tidy triangle. She draped the fabric over his head, drawing the neat fold down to his eyebrows until only a soft brown fringe peaked out under the edge. She wrapped the edges in a practiced fashion around the base of his neck and around his face until the sole visible feature remaining was his piercing blue stare. “It will help with the sun.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” His harsh words came out softer now, unavoidable due to the slight muffling from the scarf.

“Of course it does, people have worn these long before you arrived.”

“No, the _directions,”_ Kaiba’s frustration was palpable with every moment they lingered in the tent, body itching with a strange fever from Kisara’s lingering proximity.

“Have you not figured out this place yet?” She had a haughty expression, pleased with holding some secret knowledge that he lacked. “The pharaoh believes you to be sharper this time around, but perhaps he was mistaken...”

Kaiba’s eyes grew wide with recognition.

“You don’t mean...” _Atem._ The name fell short on his lips.

“Where’d you think we were go—“

“Don’t compare me to that _priest!”_ Kaiba spat, his mind finally catching up with the implication in her words.

Kisara’s face fell deep into a picture of gloom and longing that tugged even at Kaiba’s unreachable heartstrings and made him regret his words, or at least their harshness. He thought perhaps he caught the brimming wetness of unshed tears, or maybe imagined it, before she pulled back from their rather intimate closeness.

“It’s all the same to me...” She whispered with an apologetic softness before picking up off her knees and looking away. “We should get going.”

Kisara pulled back the flap of the tent but this time, she paused at the threshold and waited for Kaiba to join her. She barred his exit with an arm across his chest, pricking her talonesque fingernails together while she searched up and down the line of stalls beyond their hiding place. With an near imperceptible hint of hesitation this time, she reached out again for Kaiba’s face.

Deep in his gut, his betrayal of their shaky trust with his words turned him nauseous with inexplicable regret and he willed himself not to jump away at her touch in a show of good faith. With slow, careful hands she pulled the scarf down just a few inches further to cover his eyes and blind him completely. Kaiba swallowed the cotton in his mouth and felt her reassuring touch snake around his wrist. Her nails cut tiny halfmoons into his forearm, the only sight of her own nervousness.

“Don’t look at them as we leave, do you understand?” She said with an air of deathly seriousness.

“Yeah, alright,” Kaiba breathed.

He heard the flutter of the tent’s entrance in their wake and sensed the harsh fury of the unyielding sun once again with their departure. He could hardly balance by feel alone, tripping over his own gangling legs with the effort to keep up with Kisara’s brisk pace.

Again he heard the strange babbling voices of the purveyors of the caravan and despite his lack of understanding he knew they were watching and talking about him. He bumbled along, each twist and turn the din of the voices grew more grating and unbearable, the press of bodies from the crowd closer, all knocking shoulders and elbows threatening to break his tie to Kisara but her strong grip never wavered.

He blocked out the sounds and let himself feel adrift, bound only by the steady faith in her guiding touch until all bodies and sounds faded out into nothingness and only they remained.

* * *

As another tireless day of walking came and left, Kaiba felt exhaustion creep over him along with sunset. Kisara for her part seemed unfazed, her pace never slowing for a moment and by now he was struggling to keep up. At least it seemed they were due for a change of scenery soon enough as they neared the sharp feet of a rocky crag, splintered cliffs jutting upwards into the endless blue sky. Kaiba shuttered to think of clawing up them at all, much less in the dark, but Kisara didn’t seem to have any intentions of stopping for the night. He was steadily falling behind her.

“Hey,” His voice was hoarse from hours of silence and feeling dry from thirst again. Kisara stopped to turn around, sleek silver locks flowing behind her but beginning to grow matted from days spent unbrushed. She waited for him to speak.

He didn’t want to admit to his weakness, but in a moment when she shrugged and shuffled her feet to start walking again he made up his mind.

“Maybe we should stop for the night,” He offered. “We shouldn’t go up there in the dark. You could slip.”

“I won’t,” She leveled back with narrowed eyes and crossed arms as though she took it as an accusation. He sighed, tugging on the scarf, flustered.

“Kisara, I’m exhausted...” He grumbled despite himself.

His face softened, evidently pleased that he placed enough trust to admit that to her. Any admission of weakness was so unlike him he wondered yet again what it was about her mysterious aura that coaxed him time and again to letting his guard down around her. Kisara traipsed back on light feet until she breached his bubble of personal space and he could hardly admit to caring this time.

“Alright then,” She said lightly, handing him her water bag that was once again full. She must have refilled it at the caravan, but he’d yet to see her take a drink herself… curious. “We should rest.”

She searched the outline of the rocky steppe, looking for a secure outcropping safe from view of wandering eyes and whipping sandstorms before settling on a narrow cave. A pierce in the heart of the ochre toned rocks running like an unstitched wound tall up the the face of the ridge. Luckily enough, the wind had whipped enough sand over the entrance to coat the uneven earth with a soft dusting of rusted brown to mask the rocks and give a gentler surface for rest.

Kaiba took advantage of the space and flopped down with a satisfied groan, his back hitting the wall of the cave close to the entrance and let his lanky frame fold over into an undignified slouch. Kisara giggled, levity of her laughter ringing over and over through the deep heart of the cavern, and heat rose to Kaiba’s cheeks. He pulled his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around them but not before halfheartedly knocking a puff of sand in her direction.

“If you’ve got so much energy why don’t you go hunt sticks for a fire or something?” His voice was muffled where he’d buried his face from view between his knees.

Kisara instead joined him, opting to sit close enough beside him for their shoulders to pass precariously close to brushing on her way down despite the wide open space on the opposite wall. Of course, her descent wasn’t quite so inelegant as his own and Kaiba’s eyes followed from her knees to the top of her head through the small window between his thighs and his arms.

“I’d rather not light one tonight...” She said, resting her head on his shoulder in a gesture that felt far too familiar for having just met. He bristled at the touch but her hair smelled of charming musk mingled with salty skin. He settled under her weight just to let her drift a might closer and let himself steal another breath. “There are dangerous spirits here and we’d do well to steer clear of their intentions.”

Kaiba shifted uneasily, but decided not to ask her what sorts of wandering spirit beasts lie beyond the mouth of the cave and resolved to have faith in the judgment. She’d been right in the marketplace. The thought of their earlier encounter brought to mind another question once again.

“Why’d you have to ask for directions if you already know the way?” He picked his head up to look at her. “You said I don’t understand this place and you’re right. I don’t.”

Kisara smiled and picked up one of his hands, breaking down the modest wall he had constructed between himself and the world and placing her body between them. Her sharp nail followed the rivulets mapping his palm, tracing each spot where the lines crossed one another or broke with gaps and holes.

“The path to Aaru is not a straight line, Seto,” She followed every crease with slow fastidiousness and the feel of their hands locked together sent shivers down his spine. Subconsciously, he let himself drift closer, inescapably locked in orbit around her alluring gravity. “You should know… You’ve been there once before.”

Kaiba let a small smile tug at the edges of his mouth with pride at the accomplishment, but didn’t trust himself to speak. He licked away the subtle beginnings of a smirk before she could catch it, wetting his lips along the way. Kisara continued, her whole body weight pressed against him and he sensed the curve of her hip dipping against his own.

“This road is a maze, and the turns are trials. The only escape is through knowing yourself and thus lightening the weight of your heart. If you cannot, your heart will be eaten by Ammit, and your soul will not cross into the Field of Reeds,” She whispered solemnly, giving his hand a steady squeeze.

“If the maze is for me to solve, why would I need to ask strangers for directions?” Kaiba only felt himself growing more baffled at his troubling circumstances and Kisara’s cryptic explanations weren’t doing him any favors.

“Have you ever asked anyone for help, Seto?” His own name rang in his ears with the gentleness in her voice and his skin pricked with electricity where she dared to push up his sleeve and smooth her touch over his scratched skin.

“I don’t need help,” He said, but they both knew by now he couldn’t mean it. He shifted his shoulder to turn to meet her eyes sparkling with starlight. That’s where he knew he’d seen those eyes before: the eyes of his dragon. The thought nested in one of the few warm spots carved out in his chest.

“I like to believe you need me,” She looked up expectantly, one half of her shrouded in shadow behind her silver hair.

“I do...” He conceded and a tension slipped away, leaving him lighter after the words.

“Then the path is revealing itself,” Kisara’s hand trailed higher until it cupped his cheek, long fingers pulling him closer by the nape of his neck. The other found the edge of the scarf, tugging it free. Locked in her steady hold, Kaiba let her close the space between them until the cool press of her lips met his own. He shuddered at the sublime contact and melted into her in return.

Kisara led him forward, even in this. Her nails clawed through his tousled hair and drew out a pleased hiss and she stole the parting of his mouth as an opportunity to dip her slick tongue behind his teeth. She wound her way into his lap, lording over him on her knees and pressed his back against the cold stone walls of the cavern’s entrance.

Kaiba chased with equal fervor, hands following the taught curve of her thighs to find her waist in the darkness and drawing them as close as clothes would allow for and keening with desperate thirst against her mouth until they were both gasping for air. He would have let her graze those sharp teeth over his kiss-swollen bottom lip for eternity and he betrayed his want with a soft moan when she finally drew back.

“I shouldn’t keep you up, we’ve a long road ahead,” She whispered and stroked his hair back into place with a gentle attention. He gave her hips a pleading squeeze and let her push off his dueling coat to drape it over the sand. “Try to rest. You’ll need your strength.”

Kaiba nodded in reply, recognizing the return of his exhaustion in spite of the adrenaline coursing between them and obediently lay down for sleep. To embarrassed to meet her eyes, he caught her hand, stroking his thumb over the back.

“Don’t leave...” He said almost too softly to hear, feeling small in the darkness.

“I’ve never left you, Seto.”

Kaiba let go, curling himself up on his side and willing the frantic beating of his heart to slow to the speed of Kisara’s gentle strokes down his arm. When at last he was close to drifting off, Kisara lay down behind him, shielding him from the desert in a possessive tangle of arms and legs.


	4. Ka | Vitality

Kaiba woke to Kisara’s restless stirring beside him on the edge of dawn. He had forgotten that she was even here, that the night before was anything more than a pleasant but strange and undeserved dream. He watched her hair catch a radiant silver sheen in the morning light and was reminded that yes, she was here, as real as anything else in this bizarre place.

She hadn’t left him.  
She kept her promise.

Kaiba reached out to run his fingers through the glossy locks but wasn’t quick enough. Kisara had already sprung to her feet and shook off any lingering somnolence in a blink, immediately ready to start moving again. He grumbled under his breath, slipping back into his dueling jacket, and followed her out of the cave.

Kisara lost no time, never stopping to size up the best past forward through the jagged mountain cliff face, her nimble barefoot steps slipping between razor rocks and arms dragging her body upwards effortlessly along the daunting sheer drop off. Kaiba chased her up the rocks, memorizing and retracing each step but without the practiced ease of someone at home among the crooked crags.

He cursed where his hands grew blistered from clinging to the narrow holds and again when they tore open on the uneven edges, leaving his palms tender and bloody and slick. Kisara, as always, seemed unfazed, dipping her claws in the lapel of his coat to catch him before he knew he was slipping, testing rocks here and there for precarious looseness in his path. She didn’t chastise his struggle, just plodded upwards towards the precipice of the rocks as a silent guardian, paving the path and lingering just beyond reach.

At last, they reached a plateau nested amongst a crown of thorny peaks. Kaiba threw himself up over the ledge and flopped on his back for a brief respite from the climb. His arms and shoulders ached from the strain of hauling bodyweight up the heights. He might be in this new, younger body but Kaiba hadn’t planned on free climbing a vertical cliff face when he’d first woken up here.

Kaiba opened his eyes to glance at his surroundings and found himself lying at the base of an enormous gate, carved with golden serpents that bore piercing red eyes. It looked impassible from his perspective, but then again he hadn’t given his ingenuity much time yet to parse the problem.

“I take it this means we’re going in the right direction?” He said dryly, looking to Kisara for confirmation.

“Good job, Seto, you must have done something right,” She nudged his ribs playfully with her toes and Kaiba squirmed. Rested well enough, he picked himself up.

“Any ideas?” Kaiba ran his hands over the hinges, looking for a point of weakness where the intricate craftsmanship was fastened to the stone.

“It’s not about breaking it open, it’s about making an appeal to the god who guards this gate,” Kisara explained. “You must confess to having let go of something that was holding you back. If your heart is light and true, the door will open.”

“More of your Egyptian myths and magic?” Kaiba scoffed and rolled his eyes.

“Even you must recognize by now such things hold more power here than the science and logic which you yet cling to,” She said. Kaiba knocked to look for hollow spots, contemplating the prospects of piercing a thin part of the door.

“And what god, pray tell, rules this gate?” He made a show of spinning around and searching their surroundings. “I don’t see them. Perhaps they’ll look the other way this once.” He picked up a particularly hefty specimen of rock and heaved it at the gate, resulting in little more than a resounding _clink._

“I’d say you’ve made a little progress on your arrogance,” She offered. “After all… You admitted to needing my help.”

Kaiba gave a small nod, red rising on his face at the memory of the evening before.

“Perhaps it’s Nehebkau, the serpent god. He who gives ka and who harnesses the spirit, the owner of souls and punisher of those... _loud of voice,”_ Kisara flashed a devious smirk in his direction, and Kaiba knew he had little room for argument on that assessment.

“Sure, whatever.” He huffed. “And how do I find this ‘Nehebkau’?”

“You make a negative confession to symbolize you have abandoned your sinfulness,” She said. “I know, difficult for you, I’m certain.”

Kaiba sighed and was about to speak but Kisara cut him off.

“Address them by name.” She instructed.

“Hail, Nehebkau, bestower of dignities, who comes forth from thy cavern,” The pious words tasted unnatural in his usually blasphemous mouth. “I have not acted with arrogance.”

The gate groaned with heaviness as though it had not been moved in a thousand years, and given how long it had been since Egypt had fallen into the twilight of its once great magnificence, perhaps it had been so long since it had been moved. Kaiba’s hair whipped in a rushing wind pouring in from beyond the parting doors. A towering inferno more dry and oppressive than that of the desert alone burned his face until he was forced to shut his eyes from the assault. He blinked against the breeze, shielding his eyes to catch glimpses here and there of what lay beyond.

A great behemoth, a ghastly basilisk with two tanned human feet, strode across the surface of a lake of fire, feet grazing the surface of red-hot lava before giving a slight nod of affirmation, a flick of a forked tongue, and vanished once again into the ether.

“They have accepted,” Kisara said but Kaiba was far too distracted with the next gauntlet that lie ahead to care much about vanishing gods of benevolence and punishment. He coughed up smoke smothering his lungs billowing out from the smoldering abyss of hell itself.

“Really?” He drawled, pausing to choke on the air again. “This looks more like punishment to me.”

“If they meant to punish, you would know,” She said. Kisara walked forward, determination unbroken by the sight of the fire.

“Are you insane?” Kaiba grabbed her arm, struggling to pull her away from the banks where the lapping tongues of flame danced close to her bare feet. “We should turn back and look for a way around.”

“We can recite another spell from the Coming Forth By Day, one for not letting the body be consumed by flame—”

“Yeah, I’ve read enough contracts to know the guarantee of ‘not dying’ doesn’t necessarily preclude ‘excruciating pain’.”

“—or one for making the transformation into a heron and we will fly over.”

“Wonderful idea, and do you know the words to change us back and will your gods honor them when they come out as the indistinguishable squawking of water fowl?”

“You should be careful what you say,” She warned. “They are your gods too, and they are listening.”

“Tell them to give us some better spells then,” Kaiba ran his fingers through his hair, pushing back his bangs only for them to immediately flop themselves back into place over his brow. He sighed in exasperation. He turned away from the boiling pit, nose itching with the smell of smoke and sulfur. “Come on, before it gets any later and we’re right back where we started.”

“Fine then,” Kisara grumbled. “Have it your way.”

Kaiba hummed in satisfaction with her acquiescence, but in retrospect he should have known better than to think it would ever be so simple with her. From behind him, Kaiba heard a loud gust like that of wind rushing through an unfurling sail, quickly followed by the thunk of Kisara’s bare feet sprinting towards him across the rocky mountain earth. Before he knew what was happening, she tackled into his back, wrapping her arms around him from behind and digging her claw-like hands deep in his chest.

No, not claw-like this time—actual claws. Kisara herself seemed mostly unchanged, silver locks dancing around them in the air and her soft body heat pressing into his back. She was dragging him upwards, claws cutting through his shirt with ease and raking scratches across his chest. His feet dragged at first before she gave a groan of effort and Kaiba watched the beat of two enormous opalescent white dragon’s wings beat down around them in a heavy thrust and his feet hovered just above the surface.

He squirmed in her arms, and it only made her claws sink deeper to hold him still. She have another beat of her magnificent wings and this time, there was no mistaking it—they were flying. They bobbed up and down on the air, Kisara straining to keep them both up with the quick beating of her wings. They climbed higher and higher, until the unholy desolation for the lake of flames was safely beneath them and all that remained to navigate were the billowing clouds of smoke.

“Kisara—”

“Hold still,” She coughed up smog, faltering slightly and Kaiba wrapped his hands around her arms, reveling in the new texture where her skin had shifted to even paler, perfect white scales.

It wasn’t long before they made it to the opposite bank, Kisara alighting as gently as could be expected for a girl on two wings holding a man with a solid six inches on her stature. She released him, and Kaiba spun around to face her, marveling in saucer-eyed wonder where the skin of her arms gave way to scales and her perfect pearl wings crowded around them, shielding their bodies in an intimate protection from the heat.

“Kisara—” He whispered, tentatively reaching out to stroke the delicate translucent underside of one majestic wing. She looked initially embarrassed but allowed it, and the taught flesh was smooth, twitching at his hesitant caress. Kisara giggled as though it were ticklish.

“Kisara, you’re...” He whispered reverently, looking deep into her blue eyes as though for the first time.

“It has been a long time since I was Kisara the girl,” She said with a touch of melancholy. Her wing shifted to return his touch when it faltered for a moment. “In my life… In my life, I was enslaved for such things.”

“I would have killed them all,” Kaiba’s hand locked in a fierce grip around the crest of her wing, just beneath the ridge of an ivory horn. “For you, I would have killed them all.”

“Oh, Seto...” Her eyes pricked with tears and she reached our one clawed hand to cup his face. “You did.”

* * *

As night once again fell over the quiet desert, Kisara didn’t need asking to stop for the night this time. Kaiba would admit he was relieved to see what he thought was a yawn she snuck out when she thought he wasn’t looking. Perhaps shifting into part dragon was exhausting, he couldn’t say, but for now Kisara had tucked away her wings and claws and he was sad to watch them go.

Kisara was an enigma, and Kaiba yearned to unravel her secrets. Everything she said was a kaleidoscopic mystery of Egyptian magic and ambiguity, but he was inexplicably drawn to her, and only more so now after the tantalizing experience on the shores of the lake.

His heart dipped with anxiety. Despite everything they’d already been through, he couldn’t shake the feeling that when Kisara looked at him all she saw was that damned priest. Perhaps he didn’t give her enough credit. If all she cared about was him, wouldn’t she never have felt where she came from at all? Wouldn’t she be with him, here in this Afterlife? Of course, Kaiba had never encountered his fabled doppelganger on his brief excursion to find Atem, and Atem had offered his own explanation as to why that might be the case. One Kaiba was hardly inclined to believe.

Kisara, then, must be here for him.

The thought soothed and wound tight around his heart, warming him from the inside out until he felt flush in the face.

“What are you thinking about?” Kisara walked over from tending to their small fire, safe to light this time as they were still high in the mountains shrouded in all directions by the steep rock formations jutting up like wicked grey teeth towards the sky. The fire was hardly remarkable anyway, made of nothing but the meager twigs of sun-dried desert life Kisara collected on their journey throughout the day.

Kaiba flushed deeper, as though caught in the act of something, and almost stayed quiet but her gentle smile melted him just enough for a single word.

“You.”

“Is that so?” Kisara set herself beside him, close enough to press their shoulders together. She brazenly rested her chin on the crook of his shoulder and whispered airily in his ear. “What about me?”

Kaiba didn’t answer. He picked up his hand from where it rested between their legs and ran a finger slowly, lightly, up the line of her leg between one slit where the skirts of her linen dress were torn. Kisara shivered.

“Just… _You,”_ He breathed, finally looking up, knowing his beet red face would betray his every intention.

Kisara moved to his lap in an instant, kneeling over him the way she had the night before, running her hands over his chest and under the lapel of his jacket. She slipped the leather off his shoulders, letting it drop into the sand and left him in his tight, tattered black shirt. He let his own hands reverently draw up her thin arms to where her neck met her collar bone, delicate touch winding a finger under the strap of her dress and drawing it over the round edge of her shoulder.

“What do you want, Seto?” Her nails raked over his scalp as she purred in his ear. The thin gossamer linen of her white dress had nearly fallen away now, revealing the tantalizing paleness of the soft curve of her breast. He could smell the salt of sweat on her skin, wanted to taste her fluttering pulse under his tongue. His hands found the narrow line of her hips, desperate to fight the urge to pull her down over his thighs.

“And don’t lie to me…” She hissed. Her eyes of blue fire burned in the light of the flames. An unbidden guttural groan escaped his chest when her fingers slowly tortured his length through the thin black fabric.

“I want to make you _mine_ ,” He growled out the last word between heaving, hungry breaths, already starving for air.

“Then take it.” Her too-sharp teeth sank into the shell of his ear hard enough to draw blood and he bucked up into the pain. Kisara met him in turn, hips dipping to grind herself down on his hardness, breath hitching in her throat right in his ear at the feeling. Kaiba roped both hands through her silver hair, crushing their lips together in a fervor and bit at her lips with the intention to leave them purple and flanked with swollen marks. Her tongue escaped his clumsy onslaught, slipping into his open mouth and Kaiba inhaled the intimate warmth of her breath.

Kisara’s hands wandered down the plane of his chest, nails catching on the tattered holes before slipping under the hem and over his stomach. Kaiba squirmed at the caress of her fingers under his ribs and moaned into the way she dug them into his tired muscles. He buried his flush face in her neck and tongued at the tender flesh, a prideful smile escaping when she threw her head back and let out a gasp of her own. His hands found the tops of her calves, dragging her towards him until she was flush against his lap, trailing higher and pushing her skirts over the curve of her hips until she was straddling him with her bare legs. He nudged off the other loose strap of her dress, the thin, bloodsoaked linen falling away to reveal the pristine skin beneath.

Kisara’s cheeks flooded with scarlet, from desire not shame, and she picked up one of his hands to press it first to her lips and then to her chest, resting his thumb over the nipple. She sighed at his touch, squeezing his waist between her thighs. Kaiba’s lips found the other, tugging a touch harshly in his impatience with his teeth and she groaned, deep from her chest with a sound that echoed through the reserved corners of his heart. Kaiba suffered through the way she ground against him, struggling against the desperate urge to relieve the pressure on his cock.

“Again,” She ordered in between breathlessness, and Kaiba complied, sinking his teeth into the tender flesh to mark and she choked back another desperate sound. Under his hands her skin rippled in the starlight, shifting to the familiar sleekness of her smooth scales before fading back to soft flesh and Kaiba grew harder, gripped his hands tighter, trembling from desire at the feeling.

His desperation reached a tipping point and he tossed her back onto his jacket, gazing into the deep blue _those_ eyes _his_ eyes, the ones he’d loved since he first same them in the cards as a boy, _his, his, his._ Kisara’s gaze read the same, panting helplessly beneath his weight and she dug her heels into his back, urging him to press into her and he could already feel her wetness through his clothes.

Kisara’s hands ran over his stomach again before tracking their way to his buckle, fumbling with the fastening and Kaiba leaned down to press their foreheads together, peppering her nose with his lips between the clattering sound of the buttons. He faltered when her cool touch wrapped around the heat, sighing against her lips at the sweet relief. He shuttered at her strokes, pleading with her for more when he rocked into her tugs.

Kisara was growing impatient, breathing heavily into his kiss, and Kaiba pulled back to dip his fingers into her mouth, grazing over her sharp teeth and letting her slippery tongue coat them until the threads clung to her lips when he drew them out again. Kaiba gently drew her thigh to the side and Kisara buried her hands in his shirt. His sleek fingers drew up between her legs until she writhed at the feeling of the rough touch against her, dripping wet. He dipped in a finger, then two, marveling in fascination at the way her face twisted, first in pain and then in pleasure, curling her toes against his leg with each curl of his hand.

“Nnnn.. _Seto,”_ She complained, reaching again to find his aching length, sightlessly following the bone of his hip.

“Kisa— _ah!”_ He planned to tease her and was cut short by her demanding grip, begging him to get on with it. Kaiba smirked, turning her over and pulling her up to her hands and knees by her hair before running his palm down her spine to her ass and kneading into the softness. He stroked himself with his still wet hand before leaning his frame over her back, resting a hand over her throat.

Kaiba slipped inside her in a long, steady stroke, holding her uneven gasp with the hand around her neck.

“ _Mine,”_ He growled, sinking his teeth in to mark the flesh of her shoulder.

“ _Mine,”_ Came her breathless echo, writhing back onto his cock with every starving bite.

Kaiba clapped into her with beat of heavy thrusts and the anguished notes of pleasure caught and stuck in her mouth. Her back arched into the movement and her pale skin rippled with opalescent scales under his hands. The erotic texture brought forth an unbidden shiver from his core and all he could think was how he wanted to feel _more._

Kaiba withdrew himself completely to stop himself from coming too soon and flipped her over on her back. It was no use. He ran his wet fingers over her clit and her desperate moan cracked like a familiar roar. He watched with desperate longing the way the taught lines of her stomach pearlized into sleek scales as she keened under his fingers. He almost came from the perfect sight alone.

With every touch that drove her closer to completion, the metamorphosis was more pronounced and Kaiba vowed to send her to the abyss of pleasure just for a single glimpse of her flawless draconian body. He stroked her platinum locks and without warning buried himself to the hilt again in her wet heat. She cried out, bucking into his hands and teeth shifting to fangs in the fire light. Kaiba longed to run their sharpness over his tongue, just to taste the iron of his own blood on her lips.

“S...S _-Seto_ _—_ ” She moaned helplessly into his mouth as he picked up his pace, pounding into her hips and swallowing her sounds with his kiss. Her claws dug into his back, talons splitting open the flesh in her lost throws of shaking ecstasy. Kaiba reveled in the stinging pain, drowning his cries in her neck. He shuttered in his own release, emptying completely inside her and the excess dripped down her legs as his blood dripped down his back.

Kaiba collapsed on top of her, barely propped up on his forearms in exhaustion. Kisara’s soft fingers, free once again of their sharpness delicately felt over the deep wounds, eliciting a hiss from him.

“You’ve torn me to pieces...” She sighed, turning her head to nuzzle her nose into his cheek.

“Other way around...” He grumbled, gingerly leaning down beside her on his stomach, wrecked with absolute defeat.

“I’ll be more careful,” Her voice was tinged with regret. Kaiba scoffed, and the sound was muffled by his face in his jacket.

“Don’t,” He started, glad she couldn’t see his blush and shifting uneasily with the words and stilling again when the motion pulled on the fresh wounds. “Don’t... I... You don’t have to be. Careful, I mean.”

Kisara gave a pleased hum of agreement, reaching for their meager ration of water to pour some over his back. Kaiba groaned at the pleasurable ache pulsing deep through his tired limbs.

“It won’t last,” She whispered. “Your body… It always recovers here. Its your soul you have to fear for.”

“Hnn...” His only reply, already starting to drift off under her gentle touch running soothing circles over his tight muscles. He listened to the increasingly familiar sounds of her busyness, dousing the fire, rearranged her dress, bare feet padding quietly over the sands. Her calming presence nested beside him, and once again Kaiba found peace fading out to deep, restful sleep in her arms.


	5. Ba | Personality

Kaiba and Kisara continued their journey forward, the path leading higher into the mountains where although the temperatures were less oppressive, the air thinned and the landscape became no less desolate. Kisara still walked a distance ahead, never beside him, but Kaiba was beginning to suspect that was her own way of keeping an eye out for the dangers of the Duat. It was endearing, in a way. They’d been walking along the ridge line of an easy plateau for a few hours now, no steep inclines but precariously close to a steep drop off with loose rocks that Kisara’s feet were endlessly kicking and sending peddles hurtling to their deaths over the edge. Kaiba was thankful to her so that he might not follow the same fate as the rocks.

Up ahead in the distance, gnarled twists of brilliant azure peaked out from behind the rocks, their spindled tips growing more evident and numerous as they rounded the bend. When they drew closer, Kaiba caught a clear glimpse of the formations, too organic to be fashioned from stone. They looked like trees. In fact, they were trees, dead ones at least, a whole petrified forest all the trunks and delicate branches down to every twig replaced with mineral deposits of stunning turquoise glimmering like sea jewels in the sunlight. The trees appeared to grow thicker deep into the memorialized thicket, until the branches twined together so tightly in the depths all the sunlight was close to being blotted out. The scenery was gorgeous, a marked improvement over the flaming hell of their previous encounter, and Kaiba was so anxious for a reprieve from the blistering afternoon he could almost praise the gods for their generosity.

Almost.

Kisara sidled up beside him, starting listlessly into the darkness. Her face bore a hardened expression, and Kaiba swallowed his earlier joys. She was more attuned to the auras and mysticism of the shifting desert and by now he was learning to trust her judgment when she seemed wary about something.

“So?” He said after a moment's pause. Kisara’s face didn’t lighten.

“And so we go on. I had a feeling we might end up in this place, knowing you…” She said. Kisara reached down to wrap her fingers around his wrist, a guiding gesture more than a loving one, and Kaiba still resisted the feeling of being controlled. “I should have known.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” He spat but Kisara was already tugging him forward, always wary of their race against the impending darkness of the night.

“Don’t trust anything you see or hear,” She warned. Kisara was on high alert, head bobbing from one direction to the next in a sweep of the woods. Kaiba looked too, hoping to catch some idea of what she was looking for. “This place is built for deception.”

Kaiba looked around. Every time he turned, he was met with new surroundings, the shape and weaving of the branches shifting every time he dared to look away. They swayed in his eyes, not as though on a breeze but with the bobbing sensation of looking around when seasick, even the inanimate seeming to move on its own. The glittering twigs refracted with strange colors he could barely name, dancing in tantalizing patterns across the pressed-in memories of bark carved in the tree trunks.

Kisara flowed like water between the unnaturally blue trunks, cool to the touch, as Kaiba watched the twining branches rearrange in his vision in kaleidoscopic patterns until he felt nauseous from watching. As the sun fell lower in the sky and they marched deeper into the belly, the streaks of orange rays grew fewer and fewer and the whole nest of trees itself seemed to come alive with a life of its own. Shadows played in the corner of his periphery, dancing between the trunks but vanishing the moment he tried to face him.

By nightfall, the Kaiba felt his awareness slipping and the shades began to take the shape of figures in the twilight, shifting faces on the precipice of recognizable in the shadows. One had hands almost material, pale and tiny, gripping the limbs of trees, appearing and disappearing until he caught a tuft of unruly black hair dipping behind the trunk of a tree.

“Kisara!” He jerked her back, nearly wrenching her shoulder from its socket.

“Seto, don’t!” She tried to hold him back. “Whoever you think you saw… It isn’t them.”

“Let go!” He tried to pry her fingers free from his wrist between darting his eyes around the turquoise maze for another glimpse of Mokuba. Kaiba’s heart thrummed uncontrolled in his chest, the scene still ebbing through his vision until he felt dizzy to the point of wrenching on his own feet. “He’s here, let me go!”

“SETO NO!”

It was too late. He broke away, stumbling off in frantic desperation, tripping over petrified root systems and snapping twigs that shattered on the ground and turned to soft blue dust. Kaiba barreled forwards chasing whispers in the wind and reaching out for those familiar hands of Mokuba, childlike, the way he always remembered him in his mind. He tore off into the darkness, dragging them way off course and Kisara struggled to follow.

She almost lost him but for the fact he finally stopped. Kaiba’s eyes were narrowed in fury at a red figure in the darkness, too broad and hulking to be Mokuba and the air itself was hazy and tense, heavy with the cloying aroma of burnt tobacco. Kisara had seen the man before, in another world, in Kaiba’s nightmares. She was too late to catch the start of the encounter, and Kaiba was already speaking with the figure when she arrived.

“Have I learned what you wanted…” Kaiba spat into the orange dirt at the man’s feet. “Father?”

A laugh, hollow and condescending, carried between them.

“Seto, let him go,” She approached carefully, and the ghost seemed uninterested in her. So did Kaiba. “We have to go. Now.”

Kaiba was transfixed on the figure, his fear betrayed in the slight shake of his hands, the hunch of his shoulders, buried just beneath the surface of his fury.

“I’ve killed you twice, you son of a bitch.” His eyes hardened to ice and Kisara reached out for his arm and pleaded for him to move but it was as though he couldn’t feel her at all. “I’ll kill you again.”

“What do you want with me!” He cried, clearly delusional and eyes stinging with tears. “Answer me, you bastard!”

Whatever answer he was looking for, the shade didn’t give it, born only from a manifestation of Kaiba’s own twisted wrath.

“Please,” Kisara begged, stroking his hair and face but no soothing touch could shake the terrifying hallucination. “Please, Seto, don’t lose yourself, stay with me, please.”

The haunting illusion of Gozuboro took a step forward, closing in on the space between them and Kisara frantically tried to bar the gap before whatever beast of the Duat could manifest its true form and swallow their hearts, leaving their lifeless bodies to wander as empty husks. 

“Move, Kisara,” He rasped, still mesmerized by the delusion. “I’m going to finish this.”

“It’s a trap!” She cried. “You’ll lead them to us!”

“It’s never enough!” He yelled back. “He always comes back! I’m not running, I run and I never escape!”

The spirit crept closer, figure distorting into the face of an unnameable animal but Kaiba could no longer seem to tell the difference.

“You leave me no choice then...” She whispered longingly, drawing a final melancholy stroke down his cheek that went all but ignored in his burning ire. Kisara released a heavy breath until her lungs were emptied and her body became engulfed in a blinding white light. The nameless beast, some warped facsimile of Gozuboro halted its advance and Kaiba tore his eyes away to shield them from the overwhelming brightness.

Kisara’s bones themselves cracked and twisted, reshaping themselves under her skin that split into scales. The air cracked in a screech of fury and the earth shook with the fury of rolling thunder. A rain of shattered turquoise fell around them as the woman faded and all that remained in her stead was the exquisite majesty of the Blue-Eyes White Dragon.

She cried out again. Her roar carried through the forest and echoed off even the distant mountains and the sound shook him to the core. She towered over Kaiba and the ghost, rearing her great neck and the piercing screech of high voltage erupted from her throat. She released from her mouth a flash of white lightning, incinerating the figure until all that remained where it had stood was burnt to ash, bits of stone fallen off the tree branches turned to molten glass from the heat. The following crack of thunder rang out and Kaiba stared at the oblivion until the echoes faded out to nothingness.

“Kisara…” He whispered reverently, reaching out a shaking hand and she leaned down to nuzzle against it with the smooth crest of her beak and purred with satisfaction from deep in her chest. He reached two hands under her jaw and pressed his forehead against her nose, hiding the few salted tears of rapture that rained against her scales. “Thank you.”

* * *

In the wake of the mortifying ordeal, Kaiba and Kisara stayed put in the clearing, soft moonlight filtering down from above and rippling over her scales with each of her deep, even breaths. The air was cool in the night and Kaiba sat tucked away in the crook of her back leg as she lay down, safe beneath the draping of one large wing and beside the radiating warmth where the pale white fire burned in her belly. Kisara wrapped herself back in a half-moon, tail curling into view from behind and head resting on the earth by his feet, deep blue eyes occasionally peering back from beneath exhausted eyelids.

Kaiba absently stroked her scales, letting his fingers run down to the claws of her feet, still mesmerized at the novel feeling of her fierce talons. He wrapped his hands around their sharpness, running their point over the flesh of his forearm light enough that it didn’t break the skin and felt pleasant a shiver run down his spine where the lingering marks from their previous night together still stung on his back.

He sighed, finally relaxing again as the strange hallucinations of the forest seemed to calm. The world no longer looked as though it was shifting and spinning on its axis, the grizzly anxiety had seeped out of his bones. Whatever desperate fear had compelled him to take off into the woods alone had at last cleared out of his mind and Kaiba was beginning to feel far less ill.

He dipped his hand under the crook of Kisara’s leg he was leaning against, wrapping himself around it in a firm embrace. He let his fingers dip into the hollow and gave a soft scratch. Kisara purred in appreciation, the soft rumble vibrating against his back. He chuckled.

“Feels nice?” He gave a gentle smile, eyes soft with tenderness when she opened her mouth to let out a quiet sound of agreement.

“Yeah, on me too,” He said, leaning his head against the lean muscle of her thigh, inhaling the musky scent of her skin and listening to her claws raking across the sand when she leaned into his scratches. Kaiba suddenly recalled something Kisara had said early on their journey about taking the form of a woman being tiresome and furrowed his brow in thought.

“Kisara…” He whispered, watching her eyes while he ran another affectionate touch down her side. “You prefer to be the dragon, don’t you?”

Her head slinked forwards through the sands, nudging against his foot with her maw and dipping forwards in the slightest shallow nod before her abashed gaze turned away, giving an uneasy grumble in her chest. He felt a damp, tired breath on his bare feet. Kaiba wished she would look back at him.

“The pharaoh…” He started, reaching out again to wrap his hand around her claw in a show of tenderness. “He once said something about the ba and the ka, coming together to take these forms... The soul, our sense of who we are…”

“I didn’t understand before, or maybe I didn’t want to. I do now. This is who you are, Kisara, who you were meant to be. Inside, all along... Even if no one else could see it…” His voice shook, unaccustomed to saying such things but still wanting and needing to say them. “I meant it before. When I said I would kill the people who stoned you for it. I meant it. They shouldn’t…”

“You didn’t have to come to me as the girl, not if you didn’t want to,” His voice was full of guilt and remorse. “You don’t have to change for me.”

“You called yourself a beast,” He tightened his grip, voice warbling on the precipice of tears and softening to a whisper. “Don’t ever say that about yourself. You’re beautiful just like this.”

“I loved you first like this, you know,” He pressed his lips to her scales and her tail rippled across the sand at the feeling, catching the starlight like diamonds. “I will always love you, just like this.”

Kisara’s blue eyes returned to his own, brightening with palpable joy. She lifted her maw, nuzzling hard against his cheek and her forked tongue darted out to taste him, tines running up his neck and over his lips with a tantalizing roughness to the texture despite it’s warm wetness. A bright sound escaped from inside her chest and her tail shook the ground with a happy beat.

“I love you, Kisara,” He said, this time trailing a long kiss along her firm, sharp jaw to the edge of her mouth and basking in her warm, humid breath. He migrated down her sleek neck, touch smoothing down her glittering scales and marveled at the way her muscles rippled under his tongue, at the guttural sounds of pleasure that escaped when his tongue dipped between them. Her maw opened, neck twisting around his back to sink her teeth lovingly into his opposite shoulder and Kaiba cried out, feeling the sharp points of her fangs easily pierce both the leather and his flesh. He shuttered, struggling to regain his composure but felt himself going hard at the pain.

“Kisara,” He croaked out between unsteady breaths. “Please… _Aah!”_

Kaiba groaned again, breath hitching when her teeth withdrew and her rough tongue lapped apologetically at the blood seeping through his white coat already.

“It’s… It’s fine, better than fine...” He soothed, struggling to hide the wince when he twisted free of his coat, tossing it away into the sands. Again she licked at his face, lingering this time over his lips the feeling reminiscent of the tongue of a cat. Kaiba thought it best to remove his shirt too, already thrice soaked with blood and stiff too the touch from where it had dried before even if the black hid the stains. His dragon had other ideas in mind, fangs catching around his thick leather belt and pulling it with such a force it tore through two of the pant loops. He chuckled.

“As you wish, your majesty...” He gave her a side eye, moving deliberately slow while he undid the belt and the zipper, sliding them just over his hips before giving a teasing look back. Kisara released a deep growl that was an obvious complaint, the thin end of her tail constricting around his calf and pulling one leg out from under him leaving him lying helpless on his back, face flush in both embarrassment and arousal.

Her fangs sunk into the leg of his pants, catching the edge of his muscle and leaving a deep gash to run down one leg, blood soaking into the fabric when she pulled the trousers down, albeit with help from his eagerly squirming hips. He was already over-sensitized, caught between the feeling of the soft sands sticking to his naked sweat-damp skin, the chill of the night air, and Kisara’s long, flicking tongue exploring his bare flesh and running from his toes, tasting his blood, until at last it found his full, throbbing cock.

Her weight lorded over him, occasionally leaning forward enough to press the air out of him until he was gasping for air and the pressure burned his against his ribs, but never enough to crush him completely. Kaiba stroked down the scales armoring her powerful chest, looking for tender spots where she might feel his touch more intimately until he found nearly out of reach the juncture where one arm met her body and teased his fingers over the loose scales. Her wings beat in a sign of encouragement and the gusts tore through his hair, muddying his view of her pleasure when brown locks danced in front of his eyes.

One great claw lifted and resettled over his arm, pinning him in place despite his desperate struggle to touch more of her shimmering body and Kaiba had to content himself with watching her deep blue eyes when she lifting her head before her long tongue dipped out again over his lips, pleading with him to open his mouth. The thick, swollen heat filled his mouth with the taste of her musk, choking him to the point of tears when it found the back of his throat.

Kaiba ground up against her belly, groaning at the feel of her scales, slick with his own precum, against his cock, desperate for any relief since he couldn’t reach down to stroke himself. Kisara understood, withdrawing from his mouth and tossing him onto his stomach, claws raking over the thin flesh of his ribs and leaving red streaks down the side despite her care not to split him open.

Kaiba scrambled to his knees, back arching into her fangs against his shoulder, piercing the flesh of his chest as the vibrations from another of her pleasant purrs shook through his body. Her serpentine tongue lapped at his thighs and over his balls, leaving them dripping wet with her sticky saliva. The musk of her arousal hung thick on the air, drowning out Kaiba’s own. He shuttered with surprise, face flushed with heat when the tines teased higher between his cheeks and tasted his rim.

Kaiba released a gasp when it slipped inside, scrambling desperately for something to cling to but his fingers only found sand. She filled him deeper, the thickness prying him open in her mouth and her fangs bore down into the small of his back. The searing pain melting into pure pleasure when the twin tines explored inside him and curled against a spot that left him reeling. Kaiba collapsed against the earth, swallowing sand when he ground back into the damp heat of her deadly maw.

Kaiba was nearing the point of release, reaching one hand down to stroke his own cock with a stiff groan. Kisara’s attention grew rougher still, pulling out and thrusting back with her twisting tongue while think drips of her saliva mingled with his blood and coated the backs of his thighs. He coated his hand with some of the sleek substance, amplifying the sensation when he returned it to his own length, tormenting the sensitive, swollen head. At last, he couldn’t hold out for her any longer, finishing with swallowed sobs of anguished catharsis and his cum leaked between his fingers and his stomach and onto the sands.

Kisara didn’t stop immediately, torturing his overstimulated body until he was a conquered, writhing mess beneath her pleading for rest. Gently, her rough tongue removed itself, stopping along the way to caress his wounded back and clean his legs and chest. Kaiba lay still for a long moment while the afterglow of orgasm slowly ebbed away into a dull ache in both familiar and unfamiliar places.

Kisara growled in protest, nudging him to action by digging her beak into his chest but the effort was futile. Kaiba could hardly move. He was struck with guilt at his lack of reciprocation and gave a guilty chuckle before gingerly stroking her jaw, lingering over the brilliant ivory tusks on either side.

“I’m sorry...” He said, staring up into her lustful blue gaze from a point of absolute defeat. “Next time, I promise.”

Kaiba certainly hoped that leaving her so wanting didn’t automatically preclude the possibility of a next time, but Kisara seemed satisfied enough with this answer. She purred again, giving his face another long lick that left one side of his brown bangs sticking up over his forehead and revealing far more of his face than he ever let anyone see.

He felt a chill course through him in the night air, cooling off now that the heat was fading from his body and fought against the stinging pain of his light wounds to redress himself. He fingered the hole in the shoulder of his jacket, lingering over a spot where his blood had tinged the leather a pink tone and didn’t particularly find he had a desire for a new dueling jacket.

Kisara was lying down in the sands, waiting for his return with one graceful wing stretched out in open invitation. Kaiba resettled under its safety, letting it fall over him like a blanket and felt a new warmth and security under its weight.


	6. Shut | Shadow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Blood/Gore and Whump inbound in this chapter  
> I will add a brief summary at the start of chapter seven for anyone who wants to skip ahead.

It wasn’t until daybreak when Kaiba finally came to terms with the gravity of his early mistake of running off alone into the petrified woodland. He was still curled up against a peacefully slumbering Kisara, her great body stretched out to warm herself in the thin tendrils of sunlight leaking in through the clearing she’d created. That was the only place any light could be seen. Beyond the clearing, the wood was so densely gnarled with thickets no light at all could pierce the veil of the turquoise canopy.

Kaiba looked up to the sky, able only to pick out east from west by the light of the morning sun which did little to set them on the right path again. They were hopelessly lost and it was all his fault for taking off in a wild frenzy. He gave a sigh, carefully untucking himself from beneath her wing so as not to disturb her peace too soon and walked around the edge of the clearing, looking for broken twigs to help them find their way back the way they came. The effort proved useless, the decayed branches and twigs were snapped every which way making it impossible to know which had been his handiwork and which had been committed long before their arrival.

He returned to Kisara’s side, sitting with his legs pulled to his chest and struggling not to feel guilty at the predicament he had unwittingly walked them into. He stroked easy patterns down her scales, mostly to soothe himself with the absent gesture until eventually the touch stirred her slowly awake. She picked her head up to nuzzle under his hand, encouraging his loving attention to take a turn over her nose and beneath the curve of her jaw. She gave a low purr in satisfaction.

“Good morning…” He said, voice tinged with worry and melancholy. He hardly felt rested at all, back stiff and stinging with cuts, body exhausted from days of walking on not enough water. He was dreading starting out on the road again, a road he didn’t know where it led or where to even find it now. He would have been content to spend another day staying put with Kisara but he knew that wasn’t an option worth broaching with her.

She reacted to the listless tone in his voice with a tender lick to his neck and burrowed into his cheek. Kaiba laughed at the sensation, letting her lift his spirits a little. She rose to her haunches, flexing her scales and he heard as well as watched them ripple and settle in a pearlescent wave against her back. She licked a few stray ones flat into place and Kaiba felt a certain intimacy with watching her preen herself after waking up from their night spent together.

“We should get moving, I know…” He said, wringing his hands and swinging them at his sides to distract from his anxiety over the prospect. “Do you… Do you know what direction to start in?”

Kisara stepped in front of his path, kneeling down on her front legs before him and dipping her long neck into the desert sands. She allowed her wings to dip too, tucking them tight against her sides. She grumbled, not quite a purr but less than a growl, her eyes bright and beaming with encouragement and invitation.

“You want me to get on?” He asked, breathless with wonder. She opened her broad maw in a cheerful cry in return. He broached her slowly, bringing one hand reverently to stroke down the length of her lean, muscular throat and wrapped his arm around its length. “Are you sure?”

She replied with certainty by tugging up her neck, lifting his feet a few inches off the ground. Kaiba scrambled to wrap his other arm around her neck before she dipped to alight him back to the earth once again.

“Alright, if you say so,” He chuckled. Kaiba popped up on the balls of his feet, struggling to bound up onto her height, and seated himself squarely in the dip between her shoulder blades. His strong thighs jockeyed beneath the curve of her wings and he settled his hands over the armored curve of the cresting horns on her back. Kisara’s maw cracked out a roar of excitement, piercing his ears and echoing off into the distance.

Her powerful wings beat and kicked the sand into a whirlwind as she tore off in a light gallop before leaping skyward on the momentum, carrying them over the glittering blue canopy of the stony forest. Kaiba marvelled at the feeling of the wind whipping through his hair and memorized the way Kisara’s taught muscles twisted and flexed between his legs beneath him with each powerful stroke of her wings. Far below, the trees dotted out into pin pricks of blue, stretching out endlessly in all directions as still and vast as the ocean until far on the horizon the blue bled almost seamlessly into that of the sky.

Kisara gowled in defeat, turning her head in all directions but the forest beneath them had grown up into an impossible maze with no edge in sight. Every direction looked the same. He could sense her concern through the thrumming vibrations of her growl and he kneaded behind her eyes with reassurance.

“Let’s go back!” He called out over the whipping winds racing around them at this altitude. Kisara nodded in agreement, plummeting into a sharp dive back to the clearing and Kaiba laid himself flat against her back, allowing their bodies to become one streamlined unit while the air rushed past. She pulled up above the canopy, arresting their free fall with a sharp snap of her wings. They filled and billowed like sails and carried them until they gracefully alighted to safety and her claws sank deep into the sands.

Kaiba slipped off, gently gliding down her side and taking care not to ruffle her scales with the movement. He heaved a heavy, exasperated sigh and drug his hands through his unruly, wind swept bangs in frustration.

“Looks like that trick won’t work twice…” He grumbled, and Kisara mimicked the sound, albeit more guttural coming out from the back of her throat. “The path out must be through the woods then, however that works.”

Kaiba was again infuriated by the strange illusions of the Duat but had seen enough of them at this point to know deliberating over their esoteric logic was little more than a waste of precious daylight and the only way forward was to play along. He reached up a hand to lovingly scratch behind the ivory horn gracing the side of Kisara’s maw, just for the pleasure of watching the happy beat of her tail.

“Onwards and upwards,” He said sarcastically and they chose a heading for delving deep into the dark, writhing belly of the underbrush once again.

* * *

Kaiba and Kisara wove through the scattered and twisted limbs in the darkness, the branches hardly more than silhouettes before them in the minimal light streaming down from above. The whole scenery was eerie. Every forest he had been in before was alive with singing birds and humming cicadas but here everything was silent but for the sharp snaps of Kisara’s enormous figure shattering thin twigs to dust as she broke through them. A wasteland void of life and the desolation grew more unsettling with each passing moment.

Kisara herself seemed uneasy too and constantly darted her long neck around in the darkness as though she anticipated they would be ambushed at any moment. Perhaps she was right, Kisara had been afraid of the darkness since they first set out and had warned that her destruction of the figure of Gozuboro would have the added consequence of drawing “them” out, but whoever “they” were remained yet to be seen. It was just the two of them, wandering in silence for hours. It was impossible to know if they were making any progress at all. There we no landmarks and they frequently had to zigzag their route to avoid impassable junctures of dense tree trunks and jutting stone that rose up from nowhere in the dark. With no view of the sky, they couldn’t even tell if they were moving in a constant direction. For all they knew, they might be wandering in circles.

“Aaarrrggghhh!” Kaiba cried out in frustration, flopping down on a log and burying his face in his hands. “We’re never going to make it out of this maze!”

Kisara laid down at his feet and rested her great head beside him on the stump, gently resting the side of it against his thigh. She let a small groan of equal exasperation out her wide maw.

“I wish you could still speak to me…” He sighed, running his hand under her jaw. “You know more about these things than I do. We’re approaching one of those gates again, aren’t we? It’s hidden here, somewhere… That’s the only way I can guess we’ll make it out.”

Kisara gave a nod of affirmation, nuzzling back into his hand when he grew lost in thought and stilled his ministrations. He lifted the bag of water he kept tucked inside his coat with a few more of Kisara’s belongings and took a long sip but there wasn’t much left. They had left the caravan two days ago and hadn’t seen any water source since. Unsurprising. He was grateful that Kisara didn’t seem to have a need for any, or at least she seemed content to go without for now.

In the midst of their brief respite, Kaiba found himself longing to drift off in a nap, lulled into peacefulness by the warmth of Kisara’s exhale across his lap. It didn’t last long. His head snapped to attention when he heard the unmistakable snap of twigs not too far off from where they were sitting. Kisara pricked up at attention too, listening intently to the growing rustling sound shuffling through the sands. He caught the broken glimpse of some unholy beast slinking on its belly through the gloom, a whipped naked tail of a rat jutting of from between human legs and what he thought could pass for a cross of hands and claws.

The sounds grew, creeping closer now from all directions and by the time Kisara let out her piercing roar of intimidation it was too late. The desperate creatures closed in on their position from all angles and Kaiba was finally confronted with one of their gruesome and contorted faces. Something like that of a human marred and twisted into the quivering jowls of a jackal, drippling with bile and the stench burned his nose with acidity. He tried to cover his eyes, his nose, his mouth, but every orifice that inhaled the air burned and stung and his hurried, terrified breaths pulled the toxic smell into his lungs.

Kisara knocked him to the ground her frenzy to defend them and his head collided with a hard smack against the rock of the log, leaving him dizzy and the world spiraling through his eyes. The creature let out some ghastly screech that left his ears bloody and the call served to draw more of the creatures out of the shadows. He struggled to stand but one caught him off guard, lunging from behind to sink its putrid jaws into the back of his calf, tearing into the flesh and started dragging him helplessly through the sand. He tried to kick free but the beast was stronger.

“Kisara!” He cried, reaching desperately in her direction and her own deep fangs made quick work of the beast, tearing it free and sending the limp body careening into the trunk of a neighboring tree. The victory was short lived.

There were too many for either of them to see, their bodies mingling into a single oozing and indecipherable form in the shadows by the dozens. She swung her tails and claws to strike out at them but her movements were powerful yet slow against their quick and nibble bodies. There were too many of them. Kisara pulled back, preparing for a blast of blazing white fire from deep in her belly that she levelled against their onslaught, but it did little. For every few that she successfully slayed more disfigured and mutated forms slipped out of the shadows.

Kaiba was useless against their overwhelming strength and one tore into his back, ripping off a gruesome chunk of flesh from his shoulder with its nails and the rank slobber dripping from its teeth blistered his flesh. He cried out in anguish, struggling to reach for a broken tree limb to beat them back but another merely came forward to sink its fangs into his hand until he feared his fingers would be ripped off where the joints met the bones. Their jackal-like faces were indistinguishable but so nearly human it made his mind spin with horror, as though they once might have been like him and had long since forgotten.

Another beast came forward to levy a deep gash so hard into his side the ribs themselves might have been exposed to the air. He couldn’t tell anymore. The pain and shock were overwhelming and he was losing the strength to fight back from the mounting blood loss. His eyes were too burned and swollen to open now, mouth too dried out even to let out another scream. All he could do was listen to Kisara’s desperate battle against them as the white fire of her lightning reduced their surroundings and the bodies to ash until at last Kaiba could no longer fight off the darkness and succumbed to unconsciousness.

* * *

Kaiba came to in the middle of the night in a fierce bout of stinging pain, his head spinning and stomach twisted in nausea. He was lying on his side, back tucked against something smooth and warm. He lurched forwards with several dry heaves, struggling to keep himself from hurling the meager contents of his stomach into the sands. The world was black as pitch around him. Silent.

The lingering stench of bile, death, and decay hung cloying on the air and the rank odor of seared flesh did nothing to quell his queasiness. He lifted his right hand, feeling the aches ebb through it in time with his own pulse and knew it was split open even without being able to look. He tenderly tried to tense his fingers but only the index and middle would move and even the small gesture tore a terrific pain through his whole arm. Some of the tendons might have been severed… He slid his opposite hand down to feel around, sensing the gashes marring his finger, his forearm, under his touch. The stickiness of thick, warm blood hadn’t quite stopped seeping out of the open wounds entirely and he was suddenly grateful that he couldn’t see it for the cover of shadows.

Kisara could smell his unease even through the strong iron of his lost blood and stirred to life behind him. She gave a low, sorrowful growl before he heard her head snaking towards him over the sands and the familiar nudge of her maw against his thigh. He winced when she accidentally pressed into another wound, but it was hardly her fault. He was covered in them. She gave another apologetic murmur.

“Shhh… You didn’t do anything wrong.” He soothed, and comforting her was a way of comforting himself. “You… you saved us. Saved me. Like you always do...”

Kisara purred at the praise and her sleek tongue reached out to lick him clean some more. He got the impression she already had as his nose and eyes no longer burned with the sting of the beasts’ saliva. He groaned but her ministrations felt nice despite the pain each lap of her rough tongue brought out in his wounds. Now that he regained his coherence, he had honestly expected to find himself in far worse shape than he was. He wasn’t above suspecting that here, in this place, something about her touch was healing him. Either way, he was content to let her continue.

He reached up his good hand to stroke her side in return, finding peace in tracing over the familiar crevices of her scales. She found one of the worst injuries, where some jackal had tried to gnaw on his ribs and he winced in anguish, inadvertently digging his nails under her scales in reflex. Kisara let out a hiss of warning in reply, some of her spit finding its way to his face and he couldn’t help but chuckle. He groaned when the light laugh wracked though his aching, broken ribs. A fitting punishment, he supposed.

“Sorry,” He whispered, stroking the scales back into proper place and she purred in thanks. “I didn’t mean to.”

Kaiba struggled to slide the smallest distance backwards towards her leg, struggling to lift himself from lying to sitting in hopes it would help arrest some of his nausea. It didn’t do much. Even the short, careful movement lit up his battered chest in excruciating pain. Kisara’s growl rolled deep in her throat as if to say _stay put._

“Alright, you win,” He sighed, leaning his head back over the muscle of her great thigh. “I’m not going anywhere. Promise.”

“Those things…” He struggled against exhaustion to keep his eyes open even in the pitch black just to stave off the images his mind recalled of the beasts from their earlier assault. “They were once people, weren’t they? Ones who woke up here, like me?”

Kisara gave a dark, sorrowful whine of agreement and her tail wrapped back around to better shield him despite the lack of threats for now.

“I could have been one of them…” He said gravely. “If you’d never come to find me I… I would have been one of them… Trapped here, forgetting myself, a husk in the shape of a jackal…”

Kaiba swallowed the wince when he moved, desire for touch outweighing the strain on his beaten body. He wrapped his good hand tightly around the tip of her flicking tail, thumbing over the ridges between the shapely round scales of its tip.

“I’m sorry I was so cruel, when you found me… I… I didn’t know.” He swallowed, not wanting to make the admission but talking to Kisara in this form was easier than talking to anyone he’d ever known before and the need to be honest with her made the words bubble up to the surface.

“I was scared.” He whispered. His hand tightened into a firm grip to stop his shaking.

“Thank you. For coming to find me.”

Kisara purred again and settled her wings over him until he was completely hidden beneath her protection. Kaiba was parched with thirst and wracked with agony, but there was no point in keeping himself awake while Kisara kept watch and he needed to heal. They were safe for the moment and he struggled to focus on her gentle licks against his feet instead of the throbbing pain and drifted off in another shallow, dreamless slumber.

When he woke up again it was dawn, the sunlight once again leaking in through the canopy where Kisara’s blinding wrath had torn through the forest and leveled another small clearing. It was worse than in the darkness. The desert sun boiled the stale carcasses and the smell he was met with on waking was intolerable. He opened his eyes to look at Kisara, at the ghastly sight of her great white maw caked with the remnants of blood, no longer a sharp bright red but faded to a rusted, oxidized brown color. 

There was a certain appeal to it, knowing her furious wrath had been for him, and that she’d won, _for him._ But his stomach twisted with new wrath when he saw she had small injuries of her own, a few delicate white scales had been torn free like fingernails from their beds. For the most part, her armor had been no match for their claws and fangs, a dragon too brilliant and powerful to be marred but such feeble creatures beneath her. She didn’t look to be in pain.

They needed to leave this hideous battlefield and get a move on. As Kisara had promised, Kaiba’s injuries were healing far faster than they should have been. Had this been his earthly body, he would have needed stitches and surgeries, a long stint in a well-equipped hospital and an even longer stretch of bedrest at home. Not here. He was better, but not repaired, the deepest wounds still lingered and stole his breath when he stood up. Kaiba staggered with the effort, stumbling and catching himself against Kisara’s side.

“Good morning,” He forced a bright smile in her direction but it didn’t meet with eyes. Her blue ones looked on with pity at his state and that was one of few emotions Kaiba never tolerated, not even from her. “We can keep going. I’m fine.”

Kaiba was not fine. If he couldn’t hardly stay on his feet he didn’t stand a chance at another day filled with miles of aimless wandering. Kisara had other ideas. She snuck her great maw around his back and fumbled around, her great fangs built for power and not dexterity, before she caught hold of the tattered remains of his jacket and lifted him off the ground.

“Gaah! Kisara!” He cried out in pain at the jerking motion but it didn’t last long. She plopped him on her back, right in the hollow between her wings. She was insisting on carrying him for the day, and Kaiba was in no position to argue. He settled in comfortably and relaxed against her easy warmth while she strode off over the sands.

It might have been a veritable miracle when, at last, deep in the underbrush Kisara spotted the glimmering gold of polished brass tucked away within what was once a hollow of the wood, a millennium ago perhaps if the forest had ever lived at all and not been born out of the gods’ creation as is was now. A regal gate stood tall on its own, not clearly defending any point but merely sitting detached beside a babbling brook.

The sight of the clear flowing stream and the hesitant promise of escape was the most joyful sight Kaiba had seen since his arrival in the Duat and he slipped himself off Kisara’s back to make a break for the cooling water. A gift, perhaps from the guardian god of the door.

Kaiba ignored the sting of his wounds and with no lingering modesty around Kisara he tentatively stripped himself bare, careful to avoid dragging the tattered rags of his clothes over his open wounds. He cleaned himself in the crystalline water, letting the cool relief flow over his aching gashes and groaned at the sensation. He even dipped his mottled hair in the pool, shaking the dripping water out of his hair but allowing a few cooling rivulets to run down his cheeks and neck even after he’d washed his face. He drank deeply from the creek, unconcerned if it would make him sick. Dying of thirst an injury was a far more immediate prospect, if this body could perish from such things at all. He wasn’t entirely sure.

Kisara joined him, bathing herself in the rippling pool before the gate. The water reflected off her glittering scales like tiny diamonds the way it pooled in little droplets over her scales. She cried out in happiness, a crackling roar carrying through the forest and Kaiba joined her joy with his own resounding laughter. He coughed when the elated sound ripped through his still injured ribs.

So distracted by Kisara’s flawless form rippling in the water, Kaiba almost didn’t notice the small barge floating down the stream fastened from papyrus reeds lashed together into a waterproof canoe. Tucked inside was the unassuming figure of an almost-man, humanoid but for his narrow, hawk-like nose and hair replaced with hawk feathers. He was reading a long scroll littered with unintelligible hieroglyphs and his whole vessel was filled near to bursting with more.

“Hey!” Kaiba yelled out in greeting, not even bothering to be abashed that he was naked.

His voice must have startled him because the figure merely looked up from his reading for the slightest of nods before vanishing once again, boat and all. In his wake, the cloak of darkness fell back from the forest to let the sunlight fall freely on the stream and the brass gate beside the water swung open to grant them escape.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: The gate guardian in this chapter is Sia, god of perception and intellectual achievements. He’s traditionally the first gate guardian but having him be the second works better for the story. A fitting assessor for Seto who in his life succeeds on his technological marvels but who’s perception of the world and himself is always very warped.


	7. Sekhem | Power

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ch. 6 Summary: Kaiba and Kisara are lost in the petrified forest and assaulted in the night by a pack of jackal-spirits, other souls who wandered the Duat and lost themselves along the way. Kaiba is gravely wounded, and Kisara protects him while he recovers. She carries him on her back to the gate out where the guardian Sia, god of perception, lets them free.

Kaiba redressed himself, although it was hardly worthwhile when his clothes had been torn to shreds and were stiff and tainted with blood and dirt. The landscape beyond the open gate was warped and obscured to the point it was impossible to tell what lay in wait for them beyond. For a moment, Kaiba was reluctant to press on further and contemplated again lingering around the peaceful stream a little longer still. His rational mind knew that the tentative quiet could only be temporary and when his memories of the wandering jackals of the forest tugged at the edges of his fear he decided he no longer wanted to stay. They would go on, if for no motivation other than a sense of self-preservation.

“Are you ready?” He looked up to Kisara for confirmation, but it was more a question he was asking himself. She roared in confidence, shaking herself free of the water and leaving scattered sparkles of droplets dancing in the sun. She was beautiful, and some of his worry seeped away in the steam.

“Then what are you waiting for?” He teased. Kisara nudged him off balance with her great head and led the way forward, dipping down to pass through the broad brass gate. Kaiba followed close on her heels.

Beyond the doorway, Kaiba and Kisara emerged once again in the heart of darkness. They were dropped off on the precipice of yet another mountain pass, this one at and even higher altitude from the last, and again the air was thin. So high here that the warmth of the desert could not reach this place and the chilly air stung bitter cold on their skin. The crest of Bakhu was deep in the heart of the west, eternally positioned as far from the rising of the sun on the mortal world as the Duat could allow for, a sign that they were nearing the end of their journey across the liminal desert sands.

For all their perilous effort to arrive here, the mountain itself was unassuming but for the breathtaking reign of stars lingering over head, draped with a wide crown of the Milky Way dipping behind the ridge line on either side to vanish from view. Across the pass was already another gate, in this case not a gate at all but stone grey doors carved out of the rock itself and jams and creases so well packed with dirt Kaiba wondered if the thing had ever been opened since the first time it was shut.

The distance across the pass was short, unassuming. Too easy. Kaiba felt himself swallow in anticipation as though the set up as one of the Pharaoh’s with a trap card lying somewhere unseen and waiting to capitalize on their fatal error.

“Don’t get careless...” He whispered to Kisara and they started forward despite his unease. There was no where else to go but forward. Even the gate they’d arrived through had vanished once they’d passed through it.

Kisara moved as silent and weightless as her great figure allowed for, which wasn’t saying much, but Kaiba’s ears pricked up at the sound of every upturned pebble and every shift of the dirt as they crossed the open and unprotected expanse of the pass. They were nearing the doors, so close now that he almost dared to release his breath in a sense of security when Kisara released a piercing cry of agony that threatened to spiral the whole peak into a rocky avalanche.

Kaiba spun around and was met with the sight of an enormous serpent, a match in scale with Kisara herself only trimmed in scales of black and gold, with its fangs sunk deep in the ankle of one of her legs. She writhed in a hideous scream of pain and lashed out in the direction of it’s head, missing her mark but the great behemoth dislodged itself to avoid her, slipped back into a tight coil with a resounding hiss.

The snake was difficult to track with his eyes, slinking around in the shadows of the night as though its scales swallowed the starlight the way a black hole would and the only thing he could keep track of were the hypnotic golden eyes glimmering out from it’s sunken sockets. Kisara wailed another ferocious cry of defiance when the cobra unfurled its hood and gave another taunting hiss. Kaiba spat the the seat of it’s coiled figure in a show of defiance.

“I didn’t come all this way to watch the Blue-Eyes White Dragon loose to a _garden snake,”_ He said, knowing Kisara like he knew himself to get riled up when ignited with the fire of challenge. They would kill it, together.

Kisara possessed incredible strength but it lacked focus. She had leveled an entire section of forest in her ire when she staved off the jackals’ assault. Kaiba could sense that wouldn’t work with the serpent. The basilisk slipped around them even now, sizing them up for its next strike. This was a far more ancient and intelligent enemy than the husks of men they’d encountered in the forest. This required strategy. Kaiba struggled to think on his feet.

“Try to strike its head first, that has to be its weak point... I don’t want that thing thinking anymore than it already is...” He tried to pick out more of its movement in the darkness, assessing its striking range from the way it coiled its head back. “Don’t use your lightning right away, it will strike you while you’re preparing the attack. Save it for the end. Try to strike at the back if its hood, where it can’t see you. You can pin it to the ground and puncture the body in the middle. See? There.” Kaiba pointed to the heart of the belly. “It won’t be able to coil back without hurting itself after that. Then, and only then, will you have the time for lightning. We’ll barbecue the son of a bitch and go the fuck home.”

Kisara roared in hearty agreement and confidence, shaking off the lingering sting of the wound on her ankle and carrying herself up on the breeze out of reach of the serpent’s strike. Kaiba ducked behind the shelter of a boulder, still with view of Kisara’s movements but safe from being crept up on from behind. Kisara lorded overhead, white scales defiantly capturing and scattering the starlight in perfect opposition to the shadowed monster, beating her great wings to keep herself alight and constantly feigning left to right to keep her position just beyond reach of its fangs. It was hardly working, its golden eyes remained transfixed of Kisara, never allowing her a clear shot at the back of its head.

Kaiba dared to use himself as bait, making at calculated move out from his hiding place and tossing rocks in the snake’s direction. He didn’t think it was working until unexpectedly the serpent whipped around in a single fluid motion to strike at him. Kaiba dove out of the way, barely missing almost certain death between its jaws and Kisara cried out in distress. It was enough, though. The distraction had given her a clear shot at the cobra’s black hood and she struck a deep, searing gash through its scales with her left claw. The monster hissed in fury and anguish, writhing in a mess of twisting turns of long muscle, coiling and uncoiling in on itself and completely inapproachable before it righted itself again. The beast seethed with white hot ire, stalking Kisara again with a far more determined wave of furious intent.

The stroke had done its job, though. The creature was swaying in position, evidently a bit dizzy and hopefully less precise due to the sharp blow to the head. Kaiba keened with pride at Kisara’s obedience at his directions. Now she had an upper-hand.

In the snake’s haziness, Kisara now had it beat on both speed and power. She took a sharp dive, looking to pin it by the tail with a piercing jab from her knife-like talons.

“The stomach!” Kaiba cried, still trying to avoid stepping into the range of the beast himself and becoming more of a liability than any help. Kisara listened, pulling up course to strike at the stomach instead. The great talons of her feet caught one on it’s neck, subduing the head, while the other pinned down an upper section of the writing tail. While the beast was fettered by two halves, caput and cauda, Kisara roared in a blazing rage before tearing her vicious maw into the belly of the thing, staining the pure white of her scales with the thick, black blood of shadow incarnate.

“Kisara!” Kaiba cried out to her. “White lightning attack!”

She obeyed, pulling back her head to summon the brilliant white light from within her chest. The serpent wormed helplessly beneath her, unable to strike, looking on in what might have been fear if such a creature could know feeling before the magnificent blinding white that blotted out the brightest stars above the mountain. She let go, and the beast couldn’t let out even a final hiss of defiance for its body and voice was swallowed by the purest of light.

The silence was deafening in the wake of the beasts defeat. Some lingering sense of struggle, far deeper than their surface conflict of merely trying to reach the door seemed to fade out into peace. The only way Kaiba could describe it was the his whole being, body and consciousness together, felt far more alive and material than it had since his arrival in the Duat. His soul’s struggle against nonexistence itself had perished with the snake. There was no fear now, about dissipating to nothingness is the vast wasteland.

Their journey wasn’t over yet, though, no final destination reached. This time though, Kaiba felt more anxious to keep moving forward. He wanted to meet what was waiting beyond the door.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” He looked at the scattered and charred bones of the serpent and back up to Kisara, giving her a proud scratch under her broad, blood-stained maw. She swam with the praise and purred the way she did when she was happy just the two of them and Kaiba smiled back at her as they made for the door unafraid.

* * *

This door, unlike the others, did not seen to transport them away to some grand new landscape. Instead, it opened into a deep hall carved with precise handiwork out of the rock itself. They followed the path into the heart of the mountain led by the light of torches that burned eternal at the twists and turns of the passage way. In all, it wasn’t so deep as it seemed and Kaiba and Kisara found themselves dumped out into a glorious temple, pillars carved out of the pale sandstone of the cavern and stretching high between the floor and the ceiling of the cave. There was an inset in the ground, a hollowed out area beneath a broad skylight that dipped down a small set of stairs and was paved with perfectly cut pieces of marble. It looked similar to his own dueling arenas, albeit lacking the most thrilling aspect: his solid vision technology.

Behind the inset floor was yet another gate, standing tall with a regal air of finality, this one carved with perfect gold finery the likes of which he’d only ever seen in the trappings of the pharaoh. He sauntered over, careful of traps but this place had no air about it of lingering threat. There was a peace to it. A calm. He pushed hard against the door and it didn’t budge. He looked up to Kisara for help, but she only groaned in reply, turning her head longingly towards the skylight where the thin light of the moonless evening filtered down to bask them both in a silver-blue once again.

“Yeah, and what about it?” He watched her, frustrated with being stopped, once again. Kisara continued to nod towards the sky, growling out the most adorable and thoughtful noises from her throat before fixing her bright blue eyes on his again. “What, not until… sunrise? Until the sun comes through the window? Something about Ra and magic and doorways and all the pharaoh’s hocus pocus?”

Kisara purred with pleasure at his understanding and gave him a long lick up the side of his neck, which rapidly turned to several that found his lips until he smelled the copper of her breath swirling around him but didn’t mind at all. He scratched her favorite soft spot under the ivory tusk of her jaw time and she seemed ecstatic with his intimate knowledge of all the spots that pleased her best.

“I guess that means we’ll be stuck here for a while, won’t we?” He struggled his dueling jacket off and draped it carefully over the three small steps leading down into the lowered terrace as though he were trying not to wrinkle it despite its terrifically tattered and bloodstained state. He stripped himself of what remained of his mostly useless black turtle neck too, discarding it alongside the coat. “Might as well get comfortable...”

Kisara groaned in reprieve. She laid herself down on the marble and draped her head up to rest on the top step, burying her beak in the fabric of his jacket and clearly sniffing around in curiosity. Kaiba ignored her, opting instead to follow the sound of running water to its source: a small, trickling font bubbling up into a dish that had clearly been fashioned for some variety of religious ritual he was unfamiliar with. The water was clear, though, and cool on his skin and he took a long and healthy drink until his palette no longer made the dry sticking sound when he pressed his lips together. He laid back against the marble surface with a deep and comfortable sigh.

“Do you know what’s going to happen, when the sun comes up?” The question was a mix between asking Kisara and musing out loud, since he knew it was difficult for her to give a complicated answer. Her breath rolled in her chest and she exhaled in a thoughtful puff. She had no answers. “That’s alright, I’m not sure I want to know. No sense in worrying about something you can’t change. It doesn’t seem like this place was built to allow for any creative problem solving anyway. That’s the point. Isn’t it?”

He heard Kisara shuffle, almost a shrug as if she couldn’t be bothered with his musings on the matter. She was probably right. What would be, would be. He was suddenly struck with a soft pang of fear, not for what final task awaited them in the morning, but at what would come after. What would become of Kisara…

What if he failed?  
That was a preposterous hypothetical. He was _Seto Kaiba,_ master of his own destiny. He didn’t fail at anything.

Of course, there was the lingering sting of his unbroken string of defeats against the pharaoh. Even on his journey to another dimension he’d returned from his leap through time only to come back empty handed. Still stripped of his crown.

The thought creeped back to gnaw at him now, but for a different reason this time.

What if he _failed?_

It wasn’t about crowns or pride or some misguided sense of affirmation this time.  
What if failure meant… saying goodbye to Kisara?

What if _success_ meant saying goodbye to Kisara?!

There were no guarantees anymore, no promises that where ever the gate lead to that she would be bound to follow, or even if she’d _want_ to. She’d come to guide him, and now their journey was reaching its inevitable conclusion. The thought was enough to tear his heart from his chest and his eyes pricked with the beginnings of tears. He turned on his side on the cold stone of the marble floor, pulling his knees to his chest and the sobs started whether he wanted them to or not. He swallowed them as best he could, not wanting to attract her attention from across the temple. It was futile. Her sharp ears caught on to the sound immediately and he heard her lift up to come investigate.

Kisara purred with murmured noises of concern, small and delicate in the front of her mouth while she prodded at his chest with her beak until she finally succeeded in opening him open and flopping him over on his back. He allowed himself to drink in the sight of her perfect beauty, knowing it might be the last time. He watched her pearl scales ripple in the starlight, the perfect and endless wells of blue in her loving eyes glowing with affection. Every facsimile he’d ever programmed in his life had failed to capture her in all her perfection and he was overwhelmed with shame at all his boastfulness of his solid vision recreations. They could never do her justice. They could never be _her._

He held her face between his hands with reverence, touch delicate as though he might break her despite all her shows of strength. The sight blurred in his vision through his tears and he frantically blinked them away, not caring if she could watch them run rivers down his pale cheeks now.

“Kisara...” He breathed, voice unsteady. “I… I’m not ready to say goodbye.”

“I’ll never be ready to say goodbye. I don’t want the pharaoh’s paradise, not if you won’t be there too. I’ll stay here, forever, I don’t want to go… Not without you. I...” He was practically choking on the words and Kaiba couldn’t remember the last time he’d ever let himself just _feel_ so openly and desperately, if he ever had at all. His hands tightened as though if he held her close enough he could stop what he feared most from happening. “I love you, Kisara. Please… Don’t go.”

Kisara purred in her chest, long and loving, in effort to soothe away his fears. Her rough tongue lapped away the saltiness on his cheeks, first softly and then with more hunger when she felt his still trembling hands tucked under her jaw. He pressed uncountable kisses on her beak, still whispering quiet pleas to her between every peck and began running his hands down her neck in a fever of want and need.

Kisara met him in equal ferocity, prying open his lips and slipping her tongue so deep it stilled his quiet sobs, unable to let them escape anymore. Kaiba let his worries burn down to cinders, every ounce of his unease melting away so it wouldn’t taint the perfect memories he’d keep of her flawless form. He resolved to memorize every inch of her, that he might relive this in his mind even if he could never have her again. He sucked on her thick, warm tongue, let his skin prick with the warmth of her internal fire with each exhaled breath and keened his body to feel the smoothness of her scales against the skin of his chest.

Kisara crouched forwards, hungry to feel his wandering touch, and brought her wings to rest around them in an intimate blanket, carving out a space in the universe where they could simply exist together. Kaiba reached for the thin skin of her wings, running his fingers over the sensitive film just to feel all the ways she twitched with each ticklish movement. He couldn’t help but feel that she retained her fragility even in this form, a thousand years of pain and longing hidden beneath a facade of indomitable strength and was reminded of himself and met with the desire to comfort her even when he needed tenderness and security himself.

“I love you, Kisara,” He had to say it again, he wanted to say it a hundred times until his voice grew hoarse in case he never got another chance. “No matter what happens, please, remember that I love you now and I loved you before and I will _always_ love you. In my heart I will always love you, even if my memories are washed away.”

Kisara purred again, resting her weight on him in a way that crushed the air from his lungs until he struggled for air. The rush of desperation for oxygen, desperation for more of her, flooded his body to the tips of his fingers and he grew hard at the pressure of her heavy body against his cock. The musky smell of her own arousal filled the air, and Kaiba felt his writhing feet slip on her stray wetness already coating the sleek marble floors, dripping onto his legs.

His chest twisted with the depth of longing and a tinge of guilt, so hungry to have something that they had begun and left unfinished before. Kisara felt him grind up against her body for relief and worked her tongue over the grooves and facets of his chest, catching indiscriminately on the still unhealed wounds from both their loving and their assaults, mixed together in equal measure over and painting a story on the canvas of his body. Kaiba stole the opportunity to hastily undo his pants, shaking them off and casting them aside without a second thought now. Her fangs raked against his skin in their urgency, leaving fresh scratches even if they failed to draw blood and his breath hitched at the delightful feeling, wishing for more and having it granted when the warmth of her maw enveloped his full, throbbing length. He struggled not to come from the first touch, knowing he desperately had to resist the urge of his release to leave them both satisfied this time.

“Kisara...” He breathed through clenched teeth, moaning again and bucking up into the beckoning heat of her mouth. “Let me… Please...”

She withdrew, and Kaiba hissed at the loss of contact in the cool chill of the evening air, but watched Kisara’s eyes as she lay down beside him, turning herself over in a show of surrender with her great wings spread out in a white halo around her over the marble. He licked his lips in hungry anticipation, marveling at the sheen of her wetness leaking out to coat her tail. Kaiba mounted her, dipping his legs under the curve of her great, taught thighs as he had down with her wings only this time in pursuit of a far more intimate thrill than their shared flight.

He reached a hand back to find her warm entrance, pressing the fingers into the hollow between the scales and finding it tantalizingly tight for her size. His cock twitched at Kisara’s vulnerable, pleased sound when his finger curled against the soft, damp warmth within. He withdrew, unable to wait any longer with the thought of burying himself inside her and ran his glazed hand over himself, giving a groan when the musky smell of her assaulted his senses. He stroked himself with a few rough movements until his shaft was leaking in anticipation.

He grew himself back, letting the sensitive underside of his sleek arousal run along the buckling of her scales before his swollen head found her warmth. Kaiba relished the moment he sank into her tight heat, watching with flushed face all the ways Kisara’s draconian form quivered when he thrust. Her scales closed tight around the base of his shaft, squeezing the life from him almost painfully. He drew back before he took up a pounding and unrelenting pace, running his hands over the smooth scales of her stomach and riding back onto her writhing tail, twisting and beating against the ground in time with his movements. The ribbed texture of her cloaca against his cock drove all thought of anything but burying himself further inside her from his mind. Kisara’s guttural groans of pleasure sent vibrations through her body and through his length, heightening the erotic feeling of her walls clenched around him.

When at last Kaiba reached the breaking point, he finished deep inside her, letting his trembling completion convulse over his body in waves while he drank in the feeling of being completely surrounded by her wild roar that shook the temple floor to ceiling. He panted, broken to the point of utter exhaustion, beyond the point of feeling any longer as he withdrew for her. His hands were still tender and gentle as he slipped free from on top of her to settle in defeated against the molten heat of her flushed body still burning with the afterglow of their love.

Kaiba was suddenly overwhelmed by the vastness of both contentment and overexertion and wanted nothing more than to drift off into the gentle security of Kisara’s presence. He was at odds between wanting to absorb the full peacefulness that her presence granted and not wanting to sleep for free that he might miss another precious moment by her side.

Kisara made the decision for him. She turned over onto her stomach once again, purring deeply from the depths of her fiery chest and wrapping her neck and tail and wings around him until his naked form was tucked away into her side. Kaiba contented himself in the bundle of her loving company and fell asleep without fear or worry of what the morning would bring.

They could conquer anything if they could face it together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: In this episode of beasts of the Duat, Kaiba and Kisara meet the giant serpent demon, Apep, mortal enemy of Ra who lives banished to the underworld. His evil is born as a byproduct of our own endless struggle against the chaos and entropy of the universe and nonexistence itself. In Egyptian mythology, Set's job is the daily slaying of Apep to protect Ra.


	8. Akh | Intellect

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: [Quintessential soundtrack](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5YGxMjywSk) to “me and my dragon bae fight god in a Denny’s parking lot”

Kaiba slept long and heavy, later than he ever would have on his own. He didn’t stir until long after the sun had risen and the blistering heat of its rays finally began to heat up the air in the temple buried within the mountain. Even still, the earthen walls resisted the desert heat and the temperature never grew above comfortable. Kaiba reached out in a fog, stretching all his aching limbs and didn’t yet remember where he was. He came to gradually, the world spinning as it does after a deep and restful sleep and his awareness crept up on him slowly and comfortably. He realized he was still naked, pressed up against Kisara’s side.

He bolted up in surprise, scrambling for his clothes when he suddenly realized the sun was pacing across the morning sky and was nearly in view through the brilliant blue skylight in the ceiling of the rock-hewn atrium. The marble was smooth and cool against his tired, aching feet and he decided to put on only his pants and dueling jacket. His shirt looked worse for the wear than even his wounded chest. At least his injuries had healed quickly, the deep gashes on his ribs had reduced to more shallow scratches although they were still gruesome looking. He neglected his boots as well since they were uncomfortable and full of sand. He still held on to a few of the meager positions he’d traveled with: the scarf--a gift from Kisara if it could be called that--the water bag, the tattered rag of her long forgotten linen dress, and his duel disk.

He sat down on the steps and picked up his duel disk, absently riffling through the cards that had been lodged in the reader out of old habit. He hadn’t bothered to go through them since he’d not had a spare moment of peace since he’d first woken up but now he found his anxiety growing in the silence. There were only forty of them, with his three Blue-Eyes resting on top, as always. He ran his finger over the image and thought of Kisara. Somehow, Pegasus’ old oil painting had genuinely done her a small amount of justice. Her eyes were alight on the page with the same brilliant blue they held in reality. He was loathe to admit it but some part of him was thankful for it. As for the rest of the cards, the deck was missing all his new ones. Mokuba had seen fit to bury him with his old deck he’d dueled against the pharaoh with. Fitting, he supposed, but he let out a small sigh of frustration knowing he was unlikely to see the rest again since he only possessed what he’d arrived with. Suddenly he regretted not having a pyramid built for himself after all if only to house his duel monsters collection for all eternity.

Kisara stirred to life from across the temple floor letting out a yawn and licking some of her scales back into place, preening herself as if she ought to look her best for whatever came next. Kaiba smiled as he watched her. He chuckled when she growled in his direction when she turned her head around and caught him looking back. When she finished she turned her blue eyes skyward to the opening above, the sun white and blinding and nearly in full view within the window above. Only a few more minutes before whatever they were waiting on would come to pass.

“Rude of them to keep us waiting...” He scoffed, smirking in Kisara’s direction and she roared in agreement. “Which of your high and mighty gods is coming to judge me this time, huh?”

Kaiba stood up and crossed his arms to mask any lingering shakes of nerves that still coursed through his body from anticipation, staring straight head at the golden gate, waiting for something _anything_ to happen. The final moments as the sun crept the mere inches until it was perfectly centered on the skylight eked by as long as hours and at the moment of it’s perfect positioning light caught the great bronze mirrors lining the hall, scattering around in a dance from one to another until the whole expanse of the temple was aglow with godly glimmering light.

He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, something grand perhaps, the sweeping countenance of Ra himself alighting from his chariot of sunlight. That at least seemed to match their earlier encounters. The entrance was far less grand by comparison. The gate slid open and without any thunderous ado one short, spiky haired figure stepped out to face him from across the floor, russet face smiling brilliant with mirth.

“I’m disappointed, pharaoh, you’ve lost your flare for dramatics,” Kaiba hid his shock at seeing not another mysterious mythical monstrosity but _Atem_ the same way he always did: behind the callous delivery of an arrogant taunt. “Paradise is making you soft.”

“We’ll see about that,” Atem smirked, stepping down to the edge of the stairs but no farther. He looked as though he couldn’t come any closer, bound by some magic to stay within a stone’s throw of the gate. “It’s nice to see you again, although...”

Kaiba turned beet red as he watched Atem’s eyes search him up and down from his bare, dirty feet to his ragged and bloody clothes, making a small grimace at the sight of his wounded flesh. “I’ve seen you looking better.” He stole a knowing glance at Kisara, giving her a slight nod of recognition that made Kaiba frustrated with confusion. He hated being left out. “I suppose you could be a lot worse for the wear, too. I’m grateful you made it here in one piece, my friend.”

“Oh, shut up!” Kaiba snapped, he was exhausted and had some beast or trial somewhere yet to conquer. He didn’t have time to entertain Atem’s habitual long winded musings. “What do you think you’re doing here? In case you can’t tell, I have somewhere more important I need to be so why don’t you run along back to your little sand castle and get the hell out of my way!”

Kaiba’s tone was harsh but the truth was, underneath it all, he was ecstatic to see Atem again. He looked unchanged since their last meeting, draped in tyrian purple trappings and crowned with his millennium diadem. He almost wondered if it was another illusion, but he already knew his own memories never lived up to the real thing. He was certain this was no fabrication.

“Do you know where we are, Kaiba? What this place is?” Atem ignored his bad attitude and ran his small hand over the hieroglyphs carved into the sides of the pillars. His brow was furrowed as he carefully read the text.

“No, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me anyway,” Kaiba tapped his foot and Kisara narrowed her blue glare in the pharaoh’s direction. Clearly, she didn’t hold any feelings more positive for him than perhaps a tacit, begrudging respect and her eyes burned with something Kaiba recognized as _jealousy._ She lickedher chops as though sizing him up to swallow him whole.

“This is the Hall of Two Truths,” He drew his hand back from the walls and met Kaiba once again with the full force of his crimson eyes, now deathly serious. “Ma’at’s temple of the weighing of the heart which houses the gate to Aaru. And, like all the gates you’ve encountered thus far, it too has a guardian.”

“I didn’t think your eternal pharaoh duties stooped low enough to make you a watch dog,” Kaiba scoffed. “Maybe you can enlist that mutt, Jounouchi, to replace you if he ever gets here.”

“ _I_ am not the guardian. I am the _commander_ of the guardian,” Atem ignored Kaiba’s callous commentary, now fiddling with the familiar golden wing lashed to his arm. Atem flashed a wily and mischievous grin. “You should be grateful. I don’t suspect he likes you much.”

“Don’t think for a second I came this far just to let _you_ stand in my way,” Kaiba had an inkling where this was headed and fit his own duel disk snugly over his left arm, tucking his deck in place and watching the blue holographic interface glow to life around his face.

“You’d better be ready to back that up this time, Kaiba. I hope this challenge won’t mark the end of our road of battle,” Atem released the platter on his ancient duel disk with a sharp clap of bronze ringing out through the temple. “But I’d never dream of going easy on you either.”

“Prepare to lose your crown, pharaoh,” Kaiba drew five cards into his hand, staring his rival down from across the sunlit marble field. “It’s time to duel!”

Kaiba examined the cards in his hand, an ideal draw and he would need it. Atem did the same, only the whole of the temple quaked with the rising of stone tablets prying free from the walls before him, raining bits and pieces of the surrounding rock to the floor of the arena as they moved. Kisara let out a cracking roar of defiance from beside him.

He held one Blue-Eyes in his hand, running his thumb over the image and looking up at Kisara, curious now what would become of her if he played it… Would it summon a new one, or would Kisara have to battle the pharaoh’s monsters herself? She caught his eye and released another piercing screech of confidence that rattled the temple as Atem brought out his Celtic Guardian and laid a field of deadly traps to be broken down. His haughty smirk flickered minutely when he watched the frothing, furious saliva dripping from her vicious maw from beside him. He drew another card into his hand.

Kaiba summoned one of his weaker monsters to the field with a set of his own traps, opting to bypass his classic crush card strategy to follow his gut on setting up a tactic to summon Blue-Eyes as soon as possible. His trust in Kisara had brought him this far, had been his savior in Battle City, had been his savior as a boy… He’d place his unwavering faith in her once again.

The battle raged on. Atem was at his best, never faltering with a single move, every trap perfectly timed. They were only on turn four and Kaiba already felt himself being backed into a corner, torn between fury at his unfortunate position and begrudging respect that the pharaoh was never anything less than the top of his game. He’d already summoned his Dark Magician and Dark Magician Girl, creating a slew of problems for Kaiba, still struggling to bring Kisara onto the field.

He caught a lucky opening, sacrificing two helplessly weak monsters with the help of a spell card, and laid his precious Blue-Eyes, the first he’d ever obtained, in attack position on his duel disk. Kisara roared to life, vibrant and whole and vicious from his side and on to the field. The duel disintegrated from there. The pharaoh was at his best, but his bond with his beloved magician was a pale shade of the onslaught leveled by Kaiba and Kisara’s newfound perfect unity. Her magnificent storm of lightning cleared the field of the pharaoh's servants, making quick work of his defenses and life points in equal measure.

Atem was hardened and focused on the duel, his lack of arrogant banter and stalling a clear sign that he was caught off guard himself. A brief bought of silence fell over the tense air between them as the pharaoh considered his only remaining play.

"I'm sorry, Kaiba, but you've left me no other option..."

Atem curled a beckoning hand, drawing forth another ancient stone tablet from the temple walls and in a glorious blaze of flame and destruction the breathtaking beast that was the Sky-Dragon Osiris was summoned forth from the skylight above. The red serpent screeched and writhed at the sight of Kaiba, twin vicious mouths spouting hideous sounds of fury and defiance but Kisara never wavered in her steady form.

"I don't need the help of a God to beat you," Kaiba spat, voice low and steady. Unfazed. "Not anymore."

Kisara wailed with another roar of her own, unwavering trust in the knowledge that this time, Kaiba was ready with the perfect trap. He turned over a single card, one he'd been keeping prepared since the first turn of the match. He flipped it over, watching the color drain from the pharaoh's face as he was forced to discard his entire hand. 

"You're finished."

Kisara readied her white lighting attack to level the beast with a final brilliant coup d'grace. 

The battered and bloody body of the great dragon-god Osiris reeled in anguish, twin fanged mouths still striking out with cracks of thunder into the air even as it fell to its inevquivocable defeat. The whole of the temple shook with the burning fury of his ire and the ground quaked when his twisted red form writhed and cracked the marble surface of the the temple floor. Until at last, the lingering essence of his life snuffed out and the beast stilled in an unmoving heap on the earth. The air was still, full of sand and dust, ash and smoke, that dissipated until Kaiba had a clear view of Atem standing proud and tall across the dueling field despite his loss.

He lifted his right hand and placed it over his duel disk on his left, signifying his defeat now that his life points had reached zero. His face was hidden beneath a veil of golden bangs, and Kaiba was met with an uncertain emotion. Excitement welled up inside him, but although he’d spent a life time preparing taunts and speeches for his final victory none of the words felt right in his mouth now that the moment was here. Even Kisara was quiet in the face of their victory, evidently waiting for Kaiba to make the first move. Wordlessly he dared to cross the field, bare feet silent over the cracked tiles and taking care to avoid the hollow eyes of the red dragon’s corpse lying between them. He walked up the steps until finally he was right in front of Atem.

At last the pharaoh looked up, eyes flooded with tears but smile bright and brilliant despite them. He threw his arms around Kaiba’s neck and drew him down to his level in a fierce embrace. Kaiba choked in shock, fighting the urge to throw him off until he spoke.

“You were magnificent, Seto,” His voice was laced with relief and unbridled joy. “Welcome home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Atem, arriving at the pearly gates of Aaru to command The Sky-Dragon Osiris during the weighing of Kaiba’s heart, only to find him absolutely feral, blood soaked, clothes tattered, reeking with the stench of multiple draconian orgasms: I do NOT get paid enough to be the pharaoh of this fucking country…
> 
> In Egyptian mythology, Osiris is the guardian of the entrance to the Field of Reeds. Atem makes the comment that he “probably doesn’t like Kaiba much” both in reference to their Battle City duel and that Set murders Osiris in the story of his rivalry with Horus. _Cue[God-Shattering Star](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMfvZmhqW0A) as Kaiba/Set kills him again._
> 
> But actually, this fic was a great excuse to finally write my ultimate headcanon that Kaiba's final duel against Atem is at the weighing of the heart. His victory symbolizes that he has finally let go of all of the things that held him back from beating Atem before: isolationism, anger, hatred, self-doubt... All the things that made his heart 'heavy' in his life. By letting them go, he is finally able to beat Atem in a duel symbolizing his heart is thus lighter than the feather of Ma'at and he is able to cross over into the afterlife.


	9. Ren | Name

Sunrise alighted on the palace gardens, carried in on the breath of a warm and easy breeze. The air was more gentle here that it had been on the Duat, neither too dry nor too humid, too brisk or too burning. Always a perfect and soothing caress over the skin. Seto was up early as he’d always been in life. Old habits, it seems, die hard and tend to linger long after we’ve gone. Everything here was how he’d left it, not a trinket out of place, and he wondered if perhaps that was Atem’s doing or if it was a manifestation of his regained memories of his time spent as the miserable priest.

It felt odd, to think that way now, the duality of his self finally resolved in a truce of identity inside him, both scientist and sorcerer although there wasn’t much difference to split hairs over in this place. He dressed himself in his blue robes with golden embroidery, the only thing available in his wardrobe at the moment. They were comfortable and familiar, but he missed his dueling jacket. He didn’t let the servants touch it on his arrival and at the moment it sat in a place of honor, neatly folded in a trunk filled with all his most prized positions that had successfully made it here from his former life. Alas, he had almost nothing to speak of from Domino City, but perhaps there was a blessing in that.

He had all the time in the world to begin again.

Seto sat perched on one of his favorite spots by the edge of the reflecting pool, watching the ruby glimmer of sunrise catch on the ripples of the water. He pulled out a loaf of sourdough bread he’d kept tucked inside his robes after a breakfast gone uneaten, as was his habit. He tore free small pieces, bites perfectly sized for the tiny mouths of the pond fish, and tossed them gently onto the surface and watched them bob and spin on the surface, luring the fish closer to him. It reminded him of the koi pond in the yard of the mansion, even if the fish were of a different variety. 

They surrounded the tidbits in a hungry frenzy, always excited to be fed. Seto tossed crumbs here and there to all of them but he did play favorites to the single, opalescent white fish which stood out from all the golden ones, sapphire eyes deep and twinkling beneath the water. He prepared special bites for her. He was partial to the small black one as well, always resigning to spoiling him with extra if he prowled and pleaded long enough near his seat. 

His peace was shattered by the sound of shuffling footsteps and Seto saw the shadow before the man himself when Atem sat down beside him by the pool. He didn’t say a word, kept his hands folded neatly in his lap as he watched Seto play out his morning ritual. Seto shifted in acknowledgement, twisting his posture until their bodies faced one another even though he didn’t speak at first. 

He fed another heaping, fluffy bite to the tiny black fish, tittering through the pond with more energy than the others and smiled. His face shifted almost immediately back into a tense and stony frown. 

“Will Mokuba...?” He whispered. 

“Eventually,” Atem said, not meeting his eyes but instead watching the fish swirling just below the shining surface. “Yuugi and the others as well, I should think.”

“Hnn…” Seto hummed a disgruntled melody to himself under his breath. “I should enjoy my solitude while I have it then?”

“I’m not sure Mahaad will let you,” Atem chuckled lightly, stealing a piece of bread between his fingers. His laughter rolled deeper when one red and gold fish gobbled the scrap and suckled the pads of his fingers along the way.

Most of the pond was lapping at the pharaoh’s familiar and generous hands now with Seto’s thin fingers and small bites easily forgotten, but the lone white fish never circled away. He tore free tidbits of crinkled crust and balled them into little pellets before letting the fish swim up to nip them free from between his pinched fingers. 

“I asked her to find you,” Atem sighed longingly, running his own empty hand through the cool waters and gazing at their warped reflections in the pool. “But I suspect if I hadn’t she would have come anyway.”

Seto didn’t look up, instead opting to watch the fish’s white scales scatter the morning sunlight beneath the tiny waves rocking the pool.

“I’m not so sure what she sees in you...” Atem reached out again for another piece of bread and this time his hand lingered over Seto’s just a touch longer than expected, his hands reluctant to pull away and voice a note softer when he spoke. “Perhaps it’s not so different from what I see in you…”

The wind picked up another of its warm breezes and Seto caught the faintest touch of red on the pharaoh’s cheeks as he fed another gathering of fish. 

“Where is she now?” He asked. The sun was creeping higher now and the pink and rouge of early morning began to give way to the even tones of midmorning. Atem smiled to himself before meeting Seto’s eyes.

“You don’t honestly think she’d be happy here, in the palace, do you?” Atem stared out towards the south, towards the horizon beyond the walls of the palace gardens. “Such a thing would almost be cruel.”

Seto nodded, following his gaze to the silhouette of distant mountains miles up river where the Nile wound lazily back to its source. 

“You can take one of the horses…” Atem offered awkwardly, shifting uneasily and running a hand over the back of his neck. “It’s a long way.”

“I could use the walk,” Seto said. Atem stood up and placed a firm hand on his shoulder, watching the fish mingling in the pool for a moment longer before leaving him alone with his thoughts once again. 

* * *

Atem was right, of course. The journey southward beside the river had been as long and arduous as he’d promised it would be and Seto had been walking along the banks for three days now, sunrise to sunset. He finally passed the open floodplains dotted with villages, over the rolling wheat-painted foothills to the desolate expanse of grey crags soaring skywards above Aaru. The Nile had dwindled, still broad and impressive but a bit narrower without the downstream tributaries feeding her flow. Atem hadn’t given him any clear directions, just that he should find the juncture where the river split into two and to climb high above the valley it had worn deep into the sandstone. Here the air was cool, the red rocks blotting out the cast of the sun, but he was sweating as he wandered up the switchbacks and wondered if the journey would be worth it at all.

There were loose rocks and narrow passages towering high above the rushing water. More than once he almost fell. More than once he considered turning back. He didn’t. The ground he covered on the switchbacks up the cliff face was deceptively long and by the time he reached the crest of the ridge, twilight had fallen over the landscape and accentuated the orange and red of the desert rock. 

He panted out small puffs of air as he struggled to catch his breath, only for it to be stolen once again at the view of the wide and beautiful expanse of Aaru stretching out below. All the tiny structures of man were diminished to tiny doll house specks, insignificant beside the vastness of creation itself. The valley was licked with the shadows of clouds, slowly making their way across the hills and fields in the light of sunset. Seto allowed himself a moment to take it in, a moment of appreciation he never allowed himself to have staring listlessly out his office windows back in Domino City. There was no time to waste then but all the time of eternity to waste now. This didn’t feel wasted.

“Seto.”

He heard a familiar voice softly calling his name, a timbre like rolling thunder with a lilt like summer rain. He smiled to himself, expecting to turn around to find the woman Kisara, but was instead met with the grand towering countenance of _his_ Kisara. The dragon.

“You mean to tell me we could have been talking all this time?” He meant for it to sound a bit chastising but was betrayed by the joy in his laughter at the end. He stepped forward with a bit of hesitation. Unsure after everything where that left them now. He slowly offered his outstretched hand and she bowed down to meet him, nuzzling her beak into the touch as though no time had passed at all. 

“Not there…” Her voice rumbled over the peak with a low and sultry strength without needing to open her mouth. “But here? Yes. We can.”

The sky above was losing its pinks and yellows, fading out to a deep indigo pricked with an infinity of small silver lights that even outnumbered how many he remembered from the city. A full moon broke over the distant horizon, and Kisara looked impossibly glorious with her scales and eyes shining in the pure white light. Perfection. 

“I’m sorry…” He whispered. Running his hands under her jaw just to watch her eyes shine with contentment with all the ways he revealed his tender affections. He couldn’t bring himself to smile, cursed again to bear the weight of all the memories of what he’d done, to her, to the pharaoh, a lifetime ago. “I can’t make up for it, nothing I do… Nothing I do could ever be enough…”

“You are enough, Seto,” She closed her eyes and leaned deeper into his touch. “There are no apologies left to make.”

She licked his face, lingering over his lips in a thick kiss. He pulled her head down further to press his lips to the crest of scales above her eyes. 

“Thank you, Kisara,” He said. “For never giving up on me.”

She purred and the warm, pleasant sound shook his body to his bones and reverberated across the rocks and echoed down the sharp cliffs to the forking river below. He looked out again at the view of the valley, never letting her out of his embrace. 

“I can see why you prefer it out here,” He said, watching a falcon dip off the crest of the rocks and falling through the air before gliding and lifting higher on a gentle breeze of night air. “It’s beautiful. The palace… It can’t hope to compare.”

“There are still far better views,” Kisara withdrew her head from his hands and dipped forward on her haunches until she was close to the ground, spreading her wings out around her in open invitation. Seto beamed with excitement, running his fingers in a soft caress down her neck before accepting and climbing on her back. He dipped his calves under the curve of her wings and wrapped his arms around her neck in a fierce hold, pressing his chest to her back until he could feel the fire of her breathing and she could feel the beat of his heart.

Kisara kicked up her wings in a steady beat, scattering rocks and pebbles off the cliff face and rising above the mountain peak, higher and higher until even the grandeur of the range looked small from their height. The Nile was nothing but a blue streak from their perch among the clouds, high above where even the eagles dared not soar. Her wings caught a warm updraft and unfurled like two great blue sails, carrying them weightless on the night air beside the stars.

Seto sighed in peaceful contentment, out of reach from any burdens of the world below. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who helped arrange and wrote for the 2020 YGO Mini-Exchange! I had a blast ♡
> 
> ♡ Please leave your thoughts in the comments, I'm always striving to improve my writing! ♡  
> [especially on this one, this was a big step outside the norm for me!]
> 
>  _Formerly known as **talladeganights**_  
>  Find me on Tumblr: [RookSacrifice](https://rooksacrifice.tumblr.com/) (main) and [atembomb](https://atembomb.tumblr.com/) (Yu-Gi-Oh!)  
> Find me on Twitter: [@RookSacrifice](https://twitter.com/RookSacrifice)  
> Roast me in the [Prideshipping Discord](https://discord.com/invite/rdqAndnaB2)


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